Hubballi: Development Dialogue , the two-day international summit on social entrepreneurship organised by Deshpande Foundation began here on Saturday.At the first keynote panel on Reimagining Skilling, RCM Reddy , the managing director and CEO of IL &FS Education and Tech Services and KLE Technological University vice-chancellor Prof Ashok Shettar , deliberated on why it was important to integrate skills with formal education.Reddy said, “The notion of skilling is meant for needs category and skills are meant for school dropouts, college dropouts and unemployed. We need to go beyond that notion. Skills that are needed for that category is a subset of entire skill force system. Look at it as a lifelong exercise. To begin with, KG to PG skills need to be embedded inside formal education.”Stating that blended learning was the solution, Reddy said that to facilitate it, innovation must be taken to campuses through collaboration. “And industry needs to drive the initiative,” he said.Ashok Shettar said that considering the mammoth system of formal education in the country, there was no point in trying to move the ‘big rock’. “We should not try for a systemic change as it can’t happen. But we can try to bring in the experiences in social entrepreneurship into the campuses and in places where there is a motivated section to support the initiative. If we can create five such models, then it will be a great way to begin with,” he said. Success of such models will automatically attract others and pave the way for scaling up, he added.Other panelists on the dais were Gerald Chertavian, founder and CEO of Year Up, and Radha Basu, founder and CEO of iMerit Technologies. They shared their experiences in working in unconventional areas and the initial strategy was to channelize the skills of target groups in a proper manner so that the results would motivate others to join hands.The session was coordinated by former director of IIM Bengaluru Sushil Vachani. The panelists later answered questions asked by participants.

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