The US State Department is hosting a regional forum for its Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative in Belize, inviting former alumni to engage with their counterparts in a knowledge exchange and panel discussion. Today was the second day of the event and Jomarie Lanza stopped by to speak with some of the entrepreneurs:
These entrepreneurs are scaling up their businesses using tools from the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative. Now, they're in Belize to talk strategy with fellow alumni. Out of the group, eight are local, while the rest represent Caribbean neighbors like St. Lucia and Jamaica. The U.S. Embassy's Chargé d'Affaires explained why bringing these cohorts together matters.
Katharine Beamer - Chargé d'Affaires
"This is part of the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative which has existed for many years. And so what we are doing today and yesterday is bringing together alumni of this program from across the Caribbean to get together and continue to build their network and grow their businesses and acumen, they are here to share experiences and see what they learned in the United States during their exchange program and how they are applying that to their lives and businesses in their home communities and seeing sort of what is working what is not working and how they can continue to grow because of course in the United States small businesses are the engine of our economic growth and we are committed to helping entrepreneurs in other countries succeed as well."
"All of our exchange programs are focused on developing promising young leaders in countries and building sort of long term relationships with them so the United States considers you know our alumni to be a long term investment in the future of those people and that country and so many of our entrepreneurs that have participated in this program before come back and are very prominent members of society they are contributing a lot to our community so it is a good way United States to maintain that relationship and connection with those people."
And one of those entrepreneurs we got to connect with today was Belizean Fashion Designer, Ronelli Requena, she shared with us how the program has helped her to grow her business.
Ronelli Requena - Fashion Designer, Zayvha Sarai
"So we are lucky that we are celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the YLAI program and they gathered a lot of the alumni from across the region to com to Belize and I am so fortunate that I am able to be here because I did my program in 2021 but because of covid we were not able to travel so this is kind of my YLAI experience and I love it because it is so warm it is all the Caribbean entrepreneurs and we are working together and finding ways on how we can collaborate with each other and kind of make the Caribbean region reachable and helping our businesses, but more over how we can help each other expand."
"One of the my biggest challenges was how to organize myself and from one experience, I loss my agenda and I was not able to tell who were my clients for the next 3 months so my mentor said okay so that is one of your challenges how can we use technology to help you? So you have your phone, you have your laptop, so you don't rely heavily on that one written, that book you write your stuff on. So we have the Setmore app and that way we are able to reach to all our clients and that way alleviates me sometimes where I don't have to have that direct contact with the client we have the CRM taking care of that."
We also spoke with 2 other businesses owners based in St Lucia and Antigua
Michelle Samuel - Owner of MNS Consultancy
"So in terms of the businesses I would say it started with SLUDTERA and that is right after my fellowship in 2017. My experience actually caused me to pivot business from workforce development to social enterprise and with SLUDTERA, business development and social impact firm, and with MNS consultancy it was developed right after trying to address the gaps in dealing with all of the entrepreneurs that I dealt with where we provide mentorship and one of one support to them. With BIZ Connect Caribbean I was looking at a way for us to solve challenges for people across the Caribbean and not just St Lucia so that was born just after and as of recent I am the chair of the Caribbean franchise development council."
Elijah James - CEO, Founder, The Local App
"So YLAI for me is all about celebrating entrepreneurship it has been a decade of impact, it has been amazing. When I went to the US I went to Kansas City Missouri and I stayed, my partner in the US was Kansas City, visit KC which is kind of like of the economic and tourism unit for Kansas City and I had the opportunity to literally learn how they do what they do and replicate a lot of that stuff back home in Antigua and Barbuda. It has helped me to not only scale my business but replicate a lot of that stuff back home in Antigua and Barbuda that has helped me to not only scale my business because we are at the point now where we are looking to expand and actually launch a Caribbean market place that will be able to help promote businesses around the region and their products and businesses as well."
From Antigua to St. Lucia, and right here in Belize, the consensus among these alumni is that the Caribbean market is no longer isolated.
