SILICE Project: Promoting Social Innovations and Social Entrepreneurship in Higher Educational Institutions to Build Conscious Citizens of Tomorrow

Abstract

KIIT (deemed to be) University, one of the premier Private University in eastern India is a partner of the of the SILICE Project ( funded by Erasmus progamme of European union). One of the project assimilations that were developed is innovation in education “development of learners in the 21st century”. The educational system in India and around the world is at a turning point, turning from modernity to postmodernism, which again raises questions about the nature of education, its aims, teaching methods, curriculum, evaluation methods, organizational structure, and the ethical and political aspects of the education system. A new educational paradigm is needed that will enable the education system to cope with new ways of thinking and behavior. In a initiation of the required paradigm shift of promoting mass production of skills to promotion of individuality and creative thinking especially keeping mind the needs of the current and future society, a three pronged approach was designed to reach out the youth of today. The integration of awareness regarding alternative option of earning livelihood was done in the form of 3 and 4 credit point courses in the graduate/post graduate level across diverse domains and as workshops in the external stakeholder to initiate the sensitization of the students to the prospects of Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship. For people who have already taken the initial steps in this direction a screening mechanism to weed out the flighty individuals was designed. A progressive support platform (SinnoLab) for the sincere and dedicated individuals where they could get easy access to all the support to explore and experiment with their ideas to take it to the next level. The efforts are aligned to create enough ripples in the ecosystem that they will ultimately create culminate in a big wave of progressive change in the thinking process of the society.