SBA urges youth develop entrepreneurial mindset

Young people need to be able to innovate, assess risk and spot opportunities, regardless of the careers they eventually choose, Small Business Association Chief Executive Officer Lynette Holder has said.

Addressing a Youth Forum, on Wednesday which forms part of Small Business Week activities — under the theme Beyond Borders – Positioning Small Business for the Global Economy — Holder told students the annual event was designed to expose young people to entrepreneurship while equipping them with skills they could use in any career.

Small Business Association (SBA) Chief Executive Officer Lynette Holder, speaking to students from the St Michael School before the start of the day’s activities. (Photo Credit: Shamar Blunt)

“Now we’ve ensured that each year as we coordinate Small Business Week, we carve out a special day for you, the young people of Barbados,” she said.

The forum also highlighted the SBA’s Enterprise in Action Youth Programme, which has been offered in secondary schools since 2009 in collaboration with principals and business teachers.

The programme gives students studying Principles of Business and other business subjects an opportunity to learn about entrepreneurship.

But Holder said the objective was not to turn every student into a business owner.

“The intention is not to produce all entrepreneurs from your cohort; no, our intention has always been to encourage entrepreneurial thinking, to train persons and to help persons to become leaders of the future, and to be able to think entrepreneurially. 

“Persons who can innovate, persons who can take risks, persons who can problem solve, persons who can seize opportunities as they are presented and seek to maximise those opportunities and realise some return on the opportunities.”

She also highlighted the SBA’s partnership with the TVET Council, noting that the association became a centre for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) programmes in 2015.

That partnership resulted in the development of an NVQ Level 2 qualification in entrepreneurship for young people.

Photo Credit: Shamar Blunt

The first cohort of 65 students graduated from the programme two years ago.

Enterprise in Action programme has reached an average of 215 young people annually. “That is significant,” Holder said.

(SB)