Belize City Youth Entrepreneurs Prepare for Belize City Council Super Sale.
The Youth Innovation Incubator Summer Program is a feature program by the Belize City Council and the Belize City Child Advisory Body. The three-week experience gives participants an opportunity to build useful skills for the future. A myriad of courses offered during the program include steel pan, entrepreneurship, communications, self development, sports, and financial literacy. The ideas for the courses all came from children, through the Belize City Child Advisory Council. Today, the young entrepreneurs of the program had their products on display.
Paul Lopez, Reporting
Young Entrepreneurs in Belize City have been in training with the Belize City Council since the start of July to sharpen their business skills. Today, those small business owners had their products on display at the Founders Hub in Belize City.
Cirena Bodden
Cirena Bodden, Unique Treats Express
“The products we have are slushy sweet cups and popsicles. Our other products are chamoy cups. We didn’t bring the chamoy cup because we wanted it to be displayed next week Saturday for the Super Sale.”
Leeonah Luis
Leeonah Luis, Curly Cakes
“I love to do pastry making, we all do, so I came up with the name curly cakes and we decided to do curly cakes as our business name. Ryan does banana Cake. Mickye he does cookies and brownies. Me and Giselle do cupcakes.”
Rae-Ann Usher
Rae-Ann Usher, Nachos Before Muchachos
“We didn’t want to use a name that other businesses had. So Nacho World, Nacho Land, Buenos Nachos, those were all names taken. So, we decided to go online and find names that are rear, unique and catchy. So, you know the saying, bros before… So, we saw Nachos Before Muchachos and instantly it clicked in my mind that we can use this instead, because this, when you translate will attract more people.”
Amber Mariano
Amber Mariano, the Hotdog Shack
“The Hotdog shack is basically a business of several varieties of hotdogs, some varieties you will not see that often because generally in Belize you don’t see a lot of hotdog places at all which I think is unfair because lot of people love hotdogs, not everybody want rice and beans and barbeque every time they go on the street.”
Facilitator for the council’s entrepreneurship program, Patrick Flowers, spoke about some of the lessons covered during the three-week program.
Patrick Flowers
Patrick Flowers, Facilitator, Entrepreneur Program
“For the young budding entrepreneurs, some of the key things we had them cover were of course that they are their own bosses. So they learnt to embrace that concept, also, when it comes to business it is not about just jumping on the ground and starting to do everything. They need to plan it out. So, they had to work on preparing business plans, looking at their market.”
Cirena Bodden
“We learnt risk taking more. We learnt that there will be ups and down, we will come to disagreements, but we have to learn to stick together to make the business up and running and let it be great.”
Leeonah Luis
“I did learn about how to make the money and the most important thing we need to remember is to not touch the food with our hands and deal with the money, because the money has a lot of germs on it because other people touch the money and we touch the food people eat, so we really have to not do that.”
Rae-Ann Usher
“A major problem we had was in terms of budgeting. We had to find a correct place that had all the products we need but with a correct price so that we don’t overspend or under spend and don’t make a profit.”
Ray-Vaun Usher
Ray-Vaun Usher, The Hotdog Shack
“Everything isn’t about money in business. Sometime you have to save and sometime you have to spend. Like for the savings you have to have an emergency fund in case something happens to your business.”
These businesses will be featured at the Belize City Council’s Super Sale scheduled for the end of July on Albert Street. Micheal Fritz, the Youth and Community Support Officer at the Belize City Council says, the opportunity will give them a firsthand experience of sales in the real world.
Micheal Fritz
Micheal Fritz, Youth and Community Support Officer, Belize City Council
“Being there wondering if their products are going to be sold, if their hard work, their marketing, their seed funding which comes through partnership from The Belize City Council, Founders Hub and the H.R.C.U., whether it would be in vain or not. So, three weeks of preparation where their final test will be the Super Sale.”
Ray-Vaun Usher
Ray-Vaun Usher, The Hotdog Shack
“Gramdma, if you ever tired ah the home, just know just pop down dah the supersale and yo wah sih my shack right out deh and everything wah be ok”
Reporting for News Five, I am Paul Lopez
