As a modest effort to promote digital entrepreneurship, a 3-day “Online Freelancing & Micro work awareness Program” was organized for final year IT students from the College of Science and Technology (CST), Jigme Namgyal Engineering College (JNEC), and Gyelpozhing College of Information Technology (GCIT).

The purpose of the workshop was to raise awareness of the concept and scope of freelancing and leverage myriad opportunities available in the digital and gig economy thereby realizing the nation’s digital goals to harness the power of ICT to transform into a smart and inclusive society.

During the 3 days workshop, participants were introduced to the concept and importance of freelancing, different freelancing platforms and portals like UpWork, Fiverr, Freelancer, People per Hour, etc. Further, a demonstration of how to create Fiverr GIGs, endorse GIGs design thumbnails, create a Paynoor account, write a cover letter, and graphic design were shown.

Within the course of 3 days, students also received a number of offers in the form of “Buyer Requests” and “Direct Inquiries” from different parts of the world. The highest number of “Buyer Requests” and “Direct Inquiries” was received by Gyelpozhing College of Information Technology (GCIT) with 5 direct enquiries and 81 buyer requests followed by College of Science and Technology (CST) with 5 direct enquiries and multiple buyer requests, while Jigme Namgyal Engineering College (JNEC) received only multiple buyer requests.

The 30 participants (10 selected from each College) will additionally undergo the 2^nd Phase of 10 days of “online training and mentoring” sessions with the experts to further enhance and sharpen their skills so that they can easily compete with the rest of the freelancers around the world in the freelance market place and pursue online freelancing as a preferred career at a later stage when they graduate from college.

Organized by the Entrepreneurship Promotion Division, Department of Employment and Entrepreneurship, Ministry of Labour, and Human Resources, and facilitated by two active freelancers, the awareness program started on 26^th April 2022 at the College of Science and Technology (CST) and ended on 7^th May 2022 at the Gyelpozhing College of Information Technology (GCIT).

The program, which was funded by the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources through Start-up & CSI Flagship Program was attended by a mix of students from the three colleges as follows: