Jakarta – Indonesia’s Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Ministry launched the 2023 Wirausaha Merdeka (Independent Entrepreneurial) Program on Monday in an effort o ensure the success of the Kampus Merdeka (Freedom in Campus) policy.
During the launch event of the Wirausaha Merdeka 2023 Program, Education, Culture, Research, and Technology Minister Nadiem Anwar Makarim remarked that the program constitutes a follow-up of a similar program that was launched last year.
“Let us prove this by providing wider spaces to college students, so they can move more freely to make innovation in the field of entrepreneurship,” Minister Makarim stated during the program launch event, as followed online in Jakarta.
The minister noted that last year’s edition of the program had received positive responses and managed to draw a total of 11,405 student participants from 87 and 366 state and private higher institutions respectively.
“Therefore, in this year, we are aiming to invite a lot more students to participate in this activity,” Makarim pointed out.
He also urged students to learn multidisciplinary subjects in order to better prepare themselves to face various challenges during their college life.
The minister cited as an example that students of visual communication design major can learn subjects related to business and marketing by registering themselves in the program, so they can devise business prototypes in the design field that can be further developed.
“We strive to enhance the quality of graduates as part of our efforts to help the government’s program that aims to produce one million new entrepreneurs by 2024,” he noted.
The entrepreneurial program provides opportunities to students to learn and develop entrepreneurial skills through non-lecture activities.
The ministry is collaborating with higher education institutions to develop entrepreneurial learning with the goal of helping students to hone and enhance their entrepreneurial skills and experiences as well as strengthen their working prowess.
