A youth of the country’s south western district Khulna has turned into an entrepreneur utilizing the advantages of the digital technologies that yielded tremendous successes across the country, thanks to the largest online learning platform ‘Muktopaath‘.
” An e-learning platform for education, skills and professional development  Muktopaath has opened up  a new avenue for me to launch an initiative like farming Quail that was far beyond my imagination in an easy and simple way ,” Soumitra Bishwas, a young-man of Dumuria upazila of Khulna district said.
Being a computer demonstrator of a high school, it was fillip for him to acquire a new skill through an online platform that coerced him to entrepreneurship.
“I started my initiative after completing a course titled “Quail Farming in Low Budget” from Muktopaath. It is a time and cost effective method as anyone can take lessons easily through the platform,” Soumitra said.
He at the outset started his Quail rearing farm with 200 Quails and now he is looking for expanding his farm with 500 more Quails.
Besides, Nasir Uddin, a teacher from Pirojpur district, has created huge opportunities for people from different walks of life through “Muktopaath“.
After completion of cybernetic and offline courses from the platform himself, Nasir also took initiatives to attract the people to the courses.
Nasir said he gathered the people who used to waste time gossiping in the local market in the afternoon and arranged an online course titled “Beef Fattening” at free of cost for them.
As he had no projector for conducting the online course, Nasir took help from his colleague in this regard and arranged teas for all partakers in the course at his own expense.
With completion of the course from the “Muktopaath“, many people in the area have yielded unprecedented success through fattening of cows during the last Eid-ul-Azha, Nasir said.
Later, his initiative of teaching through the “Muktopaath” reached all neighbouring areas of Nasir and many people started coming to him and expressed keenness  to take part in the course.
Apart from his teaching profession Nasir who is working as a youth development officer said “I am trying to make the unemployed youths engaged in work by conducting these courses through the local youth development club”.
As a result, youths are now taking part in online courses regularly at the club and making themselves self-employed, he added.
The online learning platform is not only facilitating the unemployed people, but helping the professionals like physicians, government and private employees and journalists to enrich their knowledge with the technological know-how.
“When the whole world was in dark about the authentic information regarding Covid-19 pandemic a2i’s Muktopaath had emerged as an effective and pragmatic platform for the physicians and health workers to know about the lethal virus and take preventive measures to roll back the pandemic ,” Dr Nipa Islam, a private hospital physician in the city said.
She completed a course on preventing the Covid-19 from the platform at free of cost that helped her to treat the Coronavirus infected patients in the proper way.
“After completing the course, I have been able to identify the coronavirus symptoms and ways to prevent it, which was tough to know by browsing the internet,” Nipa said.
She also termed it as a simplified, time and cost effective platform for all to gain any kind of skill through it.
The a2i of the Cabinet Division and the ICT Division with the support from UNDP launched the e-learning platform in 2016 aiming at creating skilled manpower facilitating the people from all strata to receive profession and entrepreneurship oriented training from the platform.
Anyone can take online courses to gain knowledge and skills from anywhere using this platform.
a2i’s e-learning specialist Md. Afzal Hossain Sarwar said, “So far, over 12 lakh learners from diverse fields mostly students, teachers, unemployed youths, women, farmers, migrant workers, government and non-government employees, doctors and health workers, lawyers, journalists and other professionals got training “.
Currently, more than 200 courses are being run by the platform across the country with 55 partners, he said, adding that they are committed to providing technical assistance to transform the traditional training system to e-learning method at government and non-government organizations.
Sarwar also said that the online platform ‘Muktopaath‘ was conferred with the world’s most prestigious award in ICT sector, styled ‘World Summit on Information Society (WSIS)-2018’ prize. In the same year, Press Institute Bangladesh (PIB) also awarded the “Sohel Samad Memorial Award” to Muktopaath in recognition to  new Innovation/ Creativity in the media field, he added.
Besides, the platform was awarded the recognition of winner of the ‘Bangladesh Innovation Award 2021 in the Public Service Innovation’ under the citizen co-creation category, said the official.    -BSS