SRINAGAR: “Young people should be respected, valued and listened to, be supported and encouraged in building personal and social relationships, developing their innate abilities and talents for their own benefit and benefit of the society at large”, envisioned the J&K Youth Mission initiative of UT government.
Implementation of Mission Youth in Jammu and Kashmir has proved to be instrumental in satiating aspirations of youth of the UT facilitating them with a perfect platform to exploit their job potential to the fullest.
The Mission was intended to simultaneously achieve the twin goals of harnessing the rich demographic dividend and transforming youth of J&K into ambassadors of innovation, peace and development through systematic interventions for Youth Engagement and Outreach under six domains including livelihood generation, education/skill development, financial assistance, counseling/theory, sports and recreation.
To meet aspirations of youth, J&K administration has taken numerous steps towards creating infrastructure, schemes and policies to speed up their socio-economic development under Mission Youth.
Jammu and Kashmir is bestowed with a predominantly young population with about 69 % of the people being below the age of 35 years. In order to provide a platform for holistic implementation of all youth engagement and outreach initiatives and to bring the interests and empowerment of youth to the centre of policy making, government of Jammu and Kashmir has rolled out a pioneering initiative ‘Mission Youth’.
Under Mumkin scheme, unemployed youth are facilitated to procure small commercial vehicles, on subsidized rates, to establish a sustainable livelihood line in the transport sector. Also, a module has been developed on JK-e Services portal for operating the scheme digitally in a complete transparent manner.
As a special incentive under this scheme, Mission Youth is contributing 0.80 lakh or 10% of On-Road Price of Vehicle (whichever is Minimum) per beneficiary and an equivalent amount is also contributed by the vehicle manufacturers. Mission Youth has tied up with reputed vehicle manufacturers as scheme partners for providing the best in class options of vehicles to the youth. Pertinently, discretion to choose type of vehicle is left to the youth under scheme guidelines.
A dedicated portal has been launched by Mission Youth in collaboration with Vision India to connect youth of J&K with the industry. The initiative aims to provide more than 10,000 job opportunities to youth in 2022.
J&K administration has taken many steps to create infrastructure, formulate schemes and policies to speed up economic development and meet the aspirations of Youth so that they can contribute to society and achieve self growth.
Mission Youth under its AVSAR (Connect to Opportunities Initiative) has signed a MoU with Vision India for providing job opportunities to the youth of J&K. A dedicated portal of employment opportunities for youth of J&K has been provisioned to facilitate them in getting the best jobs.
In its endeavor towards empowering women socially and economically, Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha, launched Tejaswini scheme for implementation in the Union Territory. This is a start up funding programme for adolescents and young women of the UT making them empowered and self dependent through their own business ventures.
The broad aim of the scheme is to provide financial assistance to young women of 18 to 35 years of age for setting up of gainful self-employment ventures, suited to their skills, training, aptitude and local conditions. Under the scheme, female entrepreneurs shall be facilitated to avail financial assistance under Mudra from J&K Bank to the extent of Rs 5.00 lakh. Mission Youth, J&K shall provide an amount of Rs. 50,000 or 10% of project cost as subsidy. Besides, interest component of the loan shall also be sponsored by Mission Youth as special incentive and repayment of loan will technically be interest free for the young female entrepreneurs who apply for assistance under the scheme.
Mission Youth is focused on continuously encouraging, engaging and mobilizing young volunteers of J&K to support the government efforts towards socio-economic transformation of Jammu and Kashmir.
Another initiative under Mission Youth is Youth Clubs. The youth volunteers of these Youth Clubs are being given training on all aspects of government schemes. They will be part of emergency and crisis plans and will be involved in the planning and decision making regarding volunteer led activities to be done in Panchayats or wards.
The Youth Clubs are also provided special incentives in the form of grant-in-aid to support their activities. Youth Engagement programs have been convened in all districts through these youth clubs and more than 2 lakh youth have been associated with the programme.
