Trincomalee is the first South Asian venue to host the 7th UNESCO-APEID meeting on entrepreneurship education.
National Enterprise Development Authority (NEDA) Chairman Dhakshita Bogollagama explained that the decision to host the international conference somewhere other than Colombo was intentional. “Colombo is not Sri Lanka,” he said, “It’s important to highlight the other parts of this country.”
The conference is being held from October 9-11 in Trincomalee, and on October 12 in Colombo.
The UNESCO-APEID meeting on entrepreneurship education began in 2012.
Leycheng Tan, from the UNESCO entrepreneurship education network in Thailand, said that they chose Sri Lanka as a venue for this year’s conference, because “we support member states.”
She said that Sri Lanka had been vying to host the conference for a number of years, because entrepreneurship is a key facet of the nation’s development plan. Tan cautioned that government emphasis on entrepreneurship is a “double-edged sword,” because “it’s still the government’s responsibility to create jobs.”
During the conference, delegates from 21 different countries will discuss multi-stakeholder engagement to nurture future entrepreneurs.
Eastern Province Governor Rohita Bogallagama, was the guest of honour and delivered the keynote address during the first day of sessions.
The Governor asserted that even under colonial rule entrepreneurship flourished in Sri Lanka, because Sri Lankans managed the network of their industries. “They managed the plantations on behalf of the owners who lived in the UK.”
Today, a lot of people feel frustrated when they can’t achieve their set goals: teachers, parents, their own expectations, he said.
The Governor insisted that “entrepreneurship lies in no universal textbook case. It is a cultural orientation, inculcated in the minds of people and specifically youth,” pointing out a gap in Sri Lanka’s knowledge-based education system. The conference, he believed, would spark a change from knowledge-based education to execution-based education, which might include an entrepreneurial skills core curriculum.
Dhakshita Bogallagama noted that “only 16 percent of the population of this country have the opportunity to go to university, and the remainder cannot afford to go to private university,” perhaps pointing to the lack of infrastructure to practically implement entrepreneurial education in the country.
UNDP Youth Programme Coordination Consultant Varuna Ponnamperuma mentioned the emphasis on entrepreneurs in Vision 2020 and Enterprise Sri Lanka.
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