Business Bureau mentors young entrepreneurs

The Youth Business Trust Belize held an induction meeting on Wednesday for volunteer mentors and the young entrepreneurs selected to participate in the organisation’s first programmes in the country. At the meeting, members of Belize’s business community were introduced to the project and given an idea of what will be expected of them. News Five spoke with programme manager Maxine Goddard and one of the new mentors, Francis Woods.

Maxine Goddard, Program Mgr, Belize Youth Business Trust
?These young people they are all passionate, they all have these ideas, but they just need a little bit of push, and this is very important for Belize.?

Karla Heusner
?How are these entrepreneurs chosen? What kind of screening, do they have to come with training? What is the procedure and who are the successful candidates??

Maxine Goddard
?Right now we are targeting people between the ages of eighteen to thirty. We pushed the upper end to thirty-five for Belize. And there is a selection process. We are trying to get people who know what they want, in terms of they have an idea, they have some business training, they are not totally green and they just need that extra push.?

?The mentors are from the business community, they are all successful in their own right and they want to give something back. By giving the young person three hours a month of their time where they can advise, counsel and guide the young person on a one on one basis speaks a lot. That is why they are here today, to commit to the programme.?

Francis Woods, Cisco Construction
?Basically it was about the relationship between the mentor and the mentee and certainly some good guidelines on that because certainly you wouldn?t want to make any mistake in ill advising or anything like that.?

?I would hope that my mentee would be something similar to what I am doing presently and that I would be able to give my follies or my mistakes, and just show him basically the reality of what is actually happening, in a business that is running. And hopefully that will be able to help him in what he does.?

The initiative is being implemented by the Belize Business Bureau and initially funded by the Youth Start Plan Limited, the United Nations Development Program, and the British Department for International Development Small Grants Scheme.