Jaipur. ARCH College of Design & Business, Jaipur, organised a conference and workshop on Impact-Focused Entrepreneurship (IFE) and the role of Design Thinking in school education as part of its Faculty Development Programme (FDP) for school teachers teaching Business Studies and Entrepreneurship.
More than 45 teachers from 25 schools participated in the workshop and explored various aspects of entrepreneurship and design-led problem-solving through six expert sessions.
During the programme, ARCH announced an Impact-Focused Entrepreneurship FDP for participating school teachers in collaboration with Sandeep Sethi, creator of the Jaipur Educational Festival, along with Archana Surana and Dr. Shipra Vaidya. The initiative further strengthens ARCH’s commitment to promoting design sensitivity and experiential learning in education.
The workshop was conducted by Dr. Shipra Vaidya, Co-Head, Faculty of Commerce, NCERT, who travelled from Delhi to Jaipur to lead the special session.
The initiative is part of the three-year Erasmus+ Co-LIFE programme, funded by the European Union. Co-LIFE, or Co-Designing Learning for Impact-Focused Entrepreneurship, brings together partners working to promote impact-focused entrepreneurship. As the Indian partner, ARCH College of Design & Business is contributing its expertise in design-led innovation, creative entrepreneurship and sustainable development. ARCH is also leading Work Package 4, which focuses on developing a collaborative network involving businesses, non-academic organisations and other stakeholders.
On the occasion, Archana Surana invited school teachers to participate in an online Co-LIFE event to be held in Finland. She also spoke about ARCH’s ongoing Design Culture Initiative, which aims to promote Design Thinking and design sensitivity in school education.
Surana encouraged teachers to introduce students to diverse design fields such as service design, sustainable design, emotional design and systems design, and to help them develop a design-led problem-solving mindset.
Sharing her entrepreneurial journey, Surana said that after moving from Delhi to Jaipur, she recognised the city’s strong identity with the gems and jewellery industry and took the initiative to launch a jewellery design programme at the undergraduate level. She emphasised that identifying local contexts and emerging opportunities is an important part of entrepreneurship and innovation.