Guyana Youth Business Trust to provide loans, mentors for ‘graduates’
Twenty prospective young Guyanese entrepreneurs will, on June 1, commence a nine-week Inter-American Development Bank (IDB)-funded training programme aimed at equipping them with skills necessary to start and sustain viable business enterprises.
The Entrepreneurship Development Programme, a collaborative initiative between the IDB and the Guyana Youth Business Trust (GYBT) seeks to provide participants with essential business-related knowledge which GYBT Project Officer Enid Thom told Stabroek Business “is vital to their aspirations to become successful young entrepreneurs.”
Thom told Stabroek Business that over the nine weeks the participants will be tutored in a range of disciplines including the preparation of business plans, marketing, accounts, business registration, business management, payroll preparation and the administration of tax and National Insurance matters.
The nine-week training exercise is also linked to a post-programme mentoring initiative under which participants will benefit from the guidance and advice of experienced business persons as they seek to build their own businesses. Thom said that participants who demonstrate a clear willingness and commitment to setting up and managing a business can access individual loans from the GYBT of up to $800,000 to start their businesses, “We are prepared to go above that figure if the circumstances so dictate,” Thom said.
Mentors will be assigned to assist with business choices and budgeting among other things. Thom said that funding for the setting up of businesses will be assigned on the basis of the specific requirements identified by the prospective entrepreneurs as essential to the effective pursuit of their chosen business ventures.
Meanwhile, Thom told Stabroek Business that the GYBT will be hoping that the training programme, which is intended to serve as a model, will realise a group of “graduates” whose business choices will be sound and forward-looking. She said that the GYBT will definitely be giving its support to well thought-out projects that reflect an interest in the agricultural sector. “We have found that sometimes, there is an expressed interest in some areas of business which, perhaps are not as sound as others. We are hoping for choices that are carefully thought out and which provide the young entrepreneurs with the best opportunities for becoming successful business persons. Frankly, we are looking for encouraging outcomes,” she added.
The training programme has been developed out of an IDB-designed mentoring model which seeks to provide aspiring entrepreneurs with sound guidance, Thom said that while some experienced business persons had already volunteered their services as mentors there was need for more volunteers to work with participants in the programme at the end of the nine-week training exercise. “So far we have had around one in ten of the persons we have asked agreeing to serve as mentors. We need to reach out to more potential mentors.” She said that the GYBT will be seeking to create an interest in mentoring at the level of the Private Sector Commission and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The four-year IDB-funded programme is currently in its third year and Thom said that the GYBT will be seeking to continue the training and mentoring exercises at the conclusion of the IDB programme.