Asish Thakur is a business enthusiast, who is an entrepreneur, chairman, and executive director at Glocal Pvt. Ltd. intending to fill the gap between education and employability and provide training, engagement, and empowerment programs.
Thakur is a Sustainable Development and MBA graduate from Kathmandu University School of Education and has completed an undergraduate in Business Administration.
Thakur loves to learn from a wide variety of people, perspectives, and ideas and loves to experiment. He enjoys working with youths because he gets to see a lot of new ideas and perspectives and learn from them.
Establishing platforms such as Glocal Teen Hero to celebrate, award, and recognize teenagers who are doing something worthwhile in Nepal, as well as entrepreneurship and self-competency programs to promote an entrepreneurial mindset in the youths of the country, Asish Thakur is doing a really good job in empowering individuals, institutions, and academia.
Thakur’s mantra is to collaborate and initiate changes. believe in yourself and challenge yourself and your team is his philosophy. His qualities like being persistent and patient are what keep him motivated. He says, “I have to keep doing it so that it happens.”
To be patient, individuals need to have a final goal. Thakur believes that if we can connect distraction to the end goal, then that same distraction can become an opportunity. Life is all about creating opportunities for yourself.
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What is Glocal Pvt. Ltd?
Glocal is a business enterprise working in the field of education, skilling, and entrepreneurship. It provides various ranges of services, including education management, skill and leadership development programs, training solutions, and consulting for businesses, governments, development agencies, industries, institutions, and academia.
Within Glocal, Asish Thakur has initiated different platforms like Glocal Teen Hero, Skill Week, Glocal After School, and CEO Unplugged to allow individuals exposure to extracurricular activities for skill development to meet the market demand for human resources.
These platforms teach individuals about the difference between individuals with and without skills and how it impacts opportunity generation. It promotes agendas like Respect for the skills and respect for the skills.
For additional information, please visit this Glocal Nepal website.
Essence of Providing Platforms for Youths
Platforms provide opportunities for youths to develop various skills, including leadership, communication, teamwork, and problem-solving which are essential to their academic, professional, and self-development.
These platforms facilitate networking opportunities, enabling youths to connect with peers, mentors, and professionals in their field of interest, leading to collaboration and future career opportunities.
Thakur believes that a teenager’s curious mind is constantly exploring and through those thoughts, they can develop new innovations. Instead of praising and recognizing their innovations, their mindset should be recognized. Recognizing mindset is what is done by Glocal. The whole idea of Glocal is to provide platforms for the youths, then it’s up to them what they will do with that platform.
With the help of these platforms, there is a change in the perspectives of teenagers. These platforms establish mindsets that people can prove themselves regardless of age. Also, society is recognizing that extracurricular activities add value by doing something good in society which results in the overall growth of an individual.
Need for Experience-based Learning
Experience-based learning, also known as experiential learning, is the process of learning through experiences and opportunities that personally engage and are important to the learners. It starts with active participation in real-world activities or situations. Internships, field excursions, simulations, experiments, projects, or hands-on experiences that immerse learners in real-world situations.
Experience-based learning is a dynamic and engaging approach to learning that encourages active engagement, critical thinking, problem-solving, and practical skill development. Experience-based learning prepares learners for academic and real-world achievement by bridging the gap between theory and practice.
Thakur believes that academic learning is a must but working should be done side by side. So, there is an internship for it that is learning by doing. He says, “Life is not formula. Life is experience.” He gave an example saying, “One should pursue an MBA only after getting some experience.”
To learn something, one has to invest in that thing. if not then he/she is just earning and there is a big difference between working to learn and earning. Nowadays, teenagers have a lot of information and more awareness but sometimes that awareness is destructive and they are influenced quickly. So, experience-based learning is very necessary.
Asish Thakur’s View on Gap in the Nepali Market
Nepal’s education system is still based on classical education philosophies. It gives priority to cognitive development rather than skill development which doesn’t help to develop life skills. As there is a misalignment between the education system and the employment system, it doesn’t provide the youths with the skills that are in demand in the market.
Asish Thakur says that students are not getting the job they want and the market is not getting skilled manpower due to its unavailability. So, there should be collaboration between the education system and the job market. Based on the market demand, the academic curriculum should be updated. Along with this, the industry needs to develop adaptability to changes.
With this approach, there will be skilled manpower available for the industry and the students will have opportunities for internships and job placement.
For more information, please visit this link: Fixing the Unemployment and Skills Gap
Personal Opinions of Asish Thakur
Asish Thakur thinks that to bring changes in the education system, rather than changing a teaching style, the teaching system should be made more experience-based. Teaching should be done by the one who doesn’t only have a degree but also has some kind of experience in that field.
Youths should have openness and willingness to learn. They should not hesitate to experiment as they have the flexibility to experiment at a young age. Thakur suggests youths try and learn from their mistakes. Since teenagers don’t have much of responsibilities, he recommends that they utilize the best of it to learn more.
Learning should be education-focused. Thakur says, “We need to learn things from everywhere but we need to apply what we have learned locally.”
Conclusion
Asish Thakur is an enthusiastic entrepreneur and chairman at Glocal Pvt. Ltd., focusing on improving the education and skills of the youths to bridge the gap between education and employability through training and empowerment programs. He advocates for experience-based learning to align education with market demands and emphasizes the need for collaboration between the education system and the job market to address skill gaps. He suggests making teaching more experience-based and encourages youths to embrace learning opportunities and experimentation. He emphasizes the significance of using acquired knowledge to bring significant changes locally.