The NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), Government of India’s flagship programme to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, is inviting applications for ‘Mentor India’. It is as a strategic nation building initiative to engage leaders who can guide and mentor schools students in 900 plus Atal Tinkering labs (ATl) established by AIM in schools across India.
Through Mentor India, AIM is looking to engage leaders who can dedicate one– two hours every week in one or more such labs and enable school students to experience, learn and practice future skills such as design and computational thinking. ATls are dedicated works spaces where students from Class VI to Class XII will learn innovation skills and develop ideas. The labs are powered to acquaint students with state-of-the-art equipment such as 3D printers, robotics and electronics development tools, IoT and sensors etc. With 900 plus labs already identified, AIM will establish 2,000 such labs by end of 2017. The labs are designed to spur the spark of creativity and let students explore skills of future such as design and computational thinking, adaptive learning and artificial intelligence.
AIM is actively looking to engage with more corporations / institutions to adopt ATls and enable their employees to join Mentor India as volunteers. Furthermore, AIM has signed a SoI with AICTE to provide mentorship support of affiliated colleges for 366 ATls.
Possible areas of contribution from mentors include technical knowhow, innovation and design, inspirational, and business and entrepreneurship. Mentors are expected to discuss with students the various problems our Indian society is facing across multiple themes, and motivate students to develop solutions to these community problems. Mentor India programme will be further extended to provide support to Atal Incubation Centres and Existing Incubation Centres as well. Proposed recognition for mentors include digital certificate of recognition, honour board for top mentors, meet and greet with prominent dignitaries and invites to Government of India events.
The deadline for submission of applications to join Mentor India is September 30, 2017. The applications can be submitted online at http://aim.gov.in/mentor.php.