Youths receive funding, training for entrepreneurship
If making money was easy, we’d all be rich. For those of us not born with the Midas touch, one initiative in Belize is hoping to teach young people how to move up the economic ladder.
Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
Thirty-three year old Stephanie Smith is one of the eighty young entrepreneurs the Youth Business Trust Belize will help to implement their business ideas.
Shawn Finnetty, Chairman, Y.B.T.B.
“My understanding is that the youth unemployment rate is hovering just about at the twenty-two percent mark so obviously that’s a fairly high percentage. We feel that the Youth Business Trust of Belize overall, and through this particular project, contributes to the lowering of this rate.”
The four year project seeks to provide funding to the young business people. Smith received the first loan award of two thousand dollars that she will use to help expand her fast food and snack shop on at number nine Dolphin Street. According to Y.B.T.B. chairman Shawn Finnetty, the programme is not just about giving money away.
Shawn Finnetty
“Firstly, a mentoring component so trying to identify and involve key private sector players, people who already have business expertise and know how they can transfer the young people. Secondly, the second component is enterprise development assistance, really being able to give in an institutionalized way and on a regular basis the advice and support that young people need, any business needs to be able to survive. And thirdly, is the access to microfinance services. To be able to remain accredited within the you business international network the trust has to also lend money to young people but we want to take it a step further, not only provide credit but also provide all of the necessary microfinance services that support credit.”
Finnetty says, Smith has the kind of personality that is needed for the programme to achieve success.
Shawn Finnetty
“We want to be able to have people be self-reliant and also take the initiative to ask for assistance and I think Stephanie has done that and I think she has a wonderful future ahead of her.”
Stephanie Smith, 1st Recipient
“Dah just something I like do. I like mek things. I started out di mek things pan di street side, put wah table and sell things but then after one year and change I gone to my own shop right weh part I live; just build wah shop and move into the shop.”
Jacqueline Godwin
“You certainly seem to have the drive and the commitment and that’s what made you be the first recipient of this four year project. How do you see this financial donation helping your business to expand?”
Stephanie Smith
“Good cause then I really want expand more pan my business and I see myself bout two or three years from now with a bigger and better place and di cater fi tourist and thing too.”
The four year project has received overwhelming support from the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Inter – American Development Bank through its regional Caribbean project is supported by programme. The Belize portion of that project is valued at five hundred and seventy thousand U.S dollars. Y.B.T.B. is interested in supporting business ideas that are economically sound and environmentally and socially responsible.
Shawn Finnetty
“So we are looking for business ideas that will be viable and will generate income for young people but also will have an impact, a positive impact, on the society.”
Through the regional project it is hoped that a total of three hundred and fifty Caribbean youth businesses will be developed in the next four years in Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Belize.
