PIB News Update: Union Minister of State for Tribal Affairs Smt. Renuka Singh Saruta has informed that GOAL (Going Online as Leaders) is a digitally-enabled mentorship initiative of Facebook for empowering tribal youth to become leaders for tomorrow in the respective fields. GOAL Project is stated to aim at identifying and mobilizing renowned people from industry (policy makers and influencers), known for their leadership skills or roles, to digitally empower and personally mentor tribal youth from tribal communities across multiple locations of India. The initiative has been designed to identify and attach 1 Mentor who is expert in their respective fields, to four tribal youth, who will be trained and mentored.
Facebook had started a pilot project on its own in March 2019 in 5 states of India i.e. Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Maharashtra, wherein they have identified 100 Tribal Mentees and 25 Mentors. Further, Facebook envisages to identify 5000 tribals from various fields to be mentored by 1250 mentors in 5 years in a phased manner.
GOAL (Going Online as Leaders) is a Facebook initiative. Ministry of Tribal Affairs was not associated with the pilot project implemented by the Facebook, specific details regarding State wise beneficiaries are not available.