The Youth Business Trust (YBT) of Guyana through the NEX Links Project is training 35 local and Caricom entrepreneurs in business lab methodology, utilizing the expertise of two Israeli entities.
The programme was created by YBT in collaboration with the Organisation of American States (OAS), the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Centre of Haifa Israel (MCTC) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel. The five-day programme which was launched at the Linden Business Centre on Monday has been designed to foster a spirit of entrepreneurship among youth and support development of youth-initiated enterprise.
Youth drawn from Regions Two, Four, Five, Six, Seven and Ten, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago are exploring topics including management leadership, schemes of constitution of companies, strategies of management development, structure and the local and regional markets.
Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir in his feature address at the opening ceremony, pledged government’s support to the organizations involved. He also noted the importance of the programme in empowering youth to become successful business entrepreneurs and encouraged the participants to grasp as much knowledge as possible.
Nadir told the students that some of the world’s wealthiest business entrepreneurs did not achieve their wealth only through academic gains or inherited wealth but they were persons who used their initiative and grasped opportunities.
Chairman of the two-year-old NGO which operates out of the OAS, Sean Benn, said the NEX Links Project is a follow-up to the business lab methodology. “Business lab was just training of trainers where we imparted the methodology and allowed people to go out on their own… the experience from that methodology was that persons did not go the next step to get full results out of it. We realized that you can’t just train people and loose them,” he said.
Benn said that the project satisfies the needs of a support mechanism in terms of developing business plans, marketing strategies and book and record keeping.
He said the subsequent aspect would be the physical involvement, a stage which is being organized. “That is where we’ll establish a secretariat where persons can come in and receive these services as well as we’ll outreach to persons in various communities,” he added.
GYBT relies on financial contributions and technical cooperation from both the public and private sector to support its international programmes and to offer national training and related services. Other persons who attended the opening ceremony were IMC Chairman of Linden Orin Gordon, representative of the Common-wealth Youth Programme and facilitators of the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Centre Max Zahavi and Henri Cohen.
