We always hear about the Social Investment Fund building schools and community centers, opening water systems and the like in poor, particularly rural communities. But today they were giving away money with a different purpose. The fund today gave an eighty thousand dollar Belize dollar grant to the Youth Business Trust. The trust helps small business owners get off the ground with training in entrepreneurial skills, funding and mentorship programmes. As explained by Chairman Shaun Finnetty, the SIF donation will allow young Belizean entrepreneurs to travel abroad to get on the job training in the business they plan to pursue.
Shaun Finnetty, Chairman – YBTB
“What is happening is that through a regional project through the Caribbean Development Bank, a facility that provides training for young people, this SIF project will allow for young entrepreneurs in Belize to either travel abroad to locations where they can learn on the job, by kind of an exchange program facility, or we will also be able to bring experts to Belize or crafts people in certain instances that have this training and expertise already, so that they can also provide in a group environment, training to a wider group of people. But I think it is right across the board in terms of training. I think it is both for crafts people and also young business people who may be
involved in service oriented businesses like web development and things like that.”
Dianne Finnegan, Executive Director - Youth for the future
“And I think this initiative is so so well put in place because what it does is it helps organize these young people, it helps guide them to becoming more responsible and understanding the importance of repaying their loans, the importance of maintaining. We all want to get there tomorrow but we want to get there the easy way. So it is not going to be an overnight thing, that you’re just going to become rich tomorrow but you have to work your way to that level; developing your clientele, the issue of personality, being amicable to your clients, developing your whole clientele. There is a whole process in order to accomplish you getting to where you want to be tomorrow.”
Jacqueline Godwin,
A total of 29 youths have been earmarked who will directly benefit from this program. Now these youths I understand already have a business plan in place and these are the youths who are being targeted.
Roger Bradley, SIF
“Well we want to target four or five of the top ones to get the technical training but we also will be funding technical training for these other twenty odd or so as the need applies. And we are actually trying to equip the office; the AC unit is not working, they don’t really have any computers and what happens is that these young people, they are poor and they need the internet service and there is wireless internet but there are not computers. So they will need to come up and maybe do some of their paper work and maybe market their stuff on the internet.”
Shaun Finnetty,
“We think that SIF joins a long list of established donors and we hope that we are a welcome addition to their portfolio of projects and we hope that we will all life up to the expectations of the project and continue to provide youth entrepreneurs in Belize with a program that can take their business to another level.”
The Youth Business Trust Belize Programme is modelled after the Youth Business International started by Prince Charles that boasts a vast network of thirty six countries worldwide.
