Youth in the north of the island now have the opportunity to learn how to set up and operate a business with the launch of the Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme’s (YES) Community Business Labs at the Speightstown Resource Centre, St. Peter, on Tuesday.
The Business Labs, which are a component of the YES programme, are designed to train young persons to set up and run a business. The first phase, which is the introduction aspect, will continue until Thursday, October 17.
Classes will be held on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. each week, while the second phase, which focuses on business development, will be from November 5 to 27.
Minister of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment, Charles Griffith, in his address to the first cohort of the Community Business Labs, emphasised the importance of self-employment for young entrepreneurs.
“It is important to note that government cannot provide employment for all our young people. And whatever we can do as a Government, whatever we can do as a Ministry to ensure that we can have young people become self-employed and chart their own course, then we are prepared to do that,” he said.
Mr. Griffith urged the participants to consider engaging in the full YES programme. “I fully expect that those of you who are involved in the process, this is your appetizer for the main course, which is the extensive programme that is provided by YES at head office. But we thought it necessary … to decentralise, to move the programme to share information across this country to our young people,” he stated.
Youth Enterprise Officer and coordinator of the Community Business Labs, Claire Inniss, gave an overview of the course to the participants, which included:
- How to start a business
- The cell phone as a business tool
- Business model canvas
- Community Quest
- Marketing
- Customers engagement
- Money matters
- Business presentation
Ms. Inniss encouraged the participants to fully engage in the Community Business Labs programme, especially in the Community Quest.
“We are going to leave these walls and we go explore what is in Speightstown and take an audit to find out what is missing, what could you add that is not being provided in Speightstown so far,” she stated.
She also pointed out that in setting up a business they “must be aware of the statutory and regulatory obligations” to start on the right business path.
Lead Facilitator of YES’ Community Business Labs, Celeste Foster, said: “This first programme is what we call the introduction or exploratory phase, and it’s nine days. After they’ve completed this, we take a two-week break and then we go into the business development [phase], so this is the intro and then we go into business development.
“We expect that at the end of the programme they’re going to actually present on a business idea in its totality. So, this is about helping people to look at a business idea, consider how it works or doesn’t.”