Mentorship Education Kicks Off in the Republic of Uzbekistan

Release Date: 6/28/2024

Kick-off of the Entrepreneurship Education Project between the Yamagata University Entrepreneurship Education and Research Center and Business Development Bank (BDB Bank), a government-affiliated bank in the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Due to the recent economic development and rapid population growth, unemployment is becoming a serious social problem in Uzbekistan. In order to improve this situation, the government is focusing on training new entrepreneurs, and Yamagata University has launched an on-demand training program in Uzbekistan to teach Japanese-style entrepreneurial skills. In Uzbekistan, there are various other entrepreneurship training programs, both online and offline, but there is still a lack of a mechanism to support those who have learned from these programs. Therefore, together with the Business Development Bank of Uzbekistan, we have launched a mentor training program with mentors from Yamagata University, which has a wealth of experience in supporting entrepreneurs and business managers in Japan. This is the first time that mentors have been trained in Uzbekistan, and there are high expectations from the government and other related parties.

　As part of the actual program, 70 candidates for mentor training were selected from entrepreneurs registered at 14 corporate education centers in Uzbekistan under the umbrella of the Business Development Bank, and Tadashi Onodera, Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship Education and Research at Yamagata University, and Shinji Omata, President of our company, conducted application screening and interviews with all 70 mentors. After screening and interviewing 70 candidates, 24 of them were selected to participate in the mentorship training program developed by the Center. The program will be conducted in a hybrid format, with classroom lectures and teamwork based on the premise of actual social entrepreneurship based on the theme of solving local issues. The final stage of the program will be a workshop in Japan, followed by a business presentation on social entrepreneurship and the awarding of a Certificate to the successful participants. The kick-off session started with a keynote speech on creating social innovation, followed by a team-building session, and then each team worked on what community/social issue they would tackle and gave a presentation. The day was very lively, and the seriousness of the 24 prospective mentors heightened expectations for the program.