Regal business plan - Sustainable outcomes from Festival Queen's project
Published:Friday | April 27, 2018 | 12:00 AMShereita Grizzle/Gleaner Writer
Miss Jamaica Festival Queen 2017, Dainalyn Swaby, is happy with the success of her national project. The initiative, a youth-based entrepreneurial project dubbed 'Learn. Earn. Return', has to date helped more than 40 teenagers and young adults develop skills that can help them build economic resilience.
Swaby told The Gleaner she could have chosen another, more popular area to focus on, but decided on entrepreneurship as young people could have greater positive impact on Jamaica's economic situation if they acquired the skills needed to identify and create business opportunities. The queen believes young people hold the key to solving the country's current economic issues and could help eradicate problems such as unemployment.
"The sessions covered the fundamentals of entrepreneurship - business planning, financial planning and the layers between that. Sometimes people are just starting up and they don't necessarily have the know-how. People don't usually have an exact starting point on what they're going to do and how they're going to do it and so we helped them with that," she said.
ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET
"What we wanted to do was instil an entrepreneurial mindset in young people. We wanted to change the way they think about business, and I definitely think that is something that has been achieved. Persons understand now what they need to fully start a business. They learnt how to be confident in their plans, their models, and that, I believe, is critical in how they will execute at the end of the day."
Nine sessions were held in Kingston, St Thomas, St Catherine, Manchester and St Elizabeth. Swaby and her team partnered with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, and the Social Development Commission to mobilise potential participants. Swaby told The Gleaner that the initiative was aimed at the youth, but she had to widen her target audience. "I had to go with the people who were interested in the information we had to offer and that didn't always include just the young people. But that was the aim of the project from the get-go, to get people who have the general interest and want the information."
Based on the feedback from participants, Swaby believes the project achieved exactly what it set out to. "I think they (participants) considered it productive. For most of them, it was getting information they didn't have before. We helped with business plans and business models, and for most persons, they appreciated that because they didn't think of setting up a business plan or sketching out a business model when they started their businesses," she explained. It has led to a Business Pitch project in St Elizabeth, "So the participants in the programme are now submitting their business proposals and the persons whose business ideas pitch the most potential will receive funding that will go towards their businesses.
"We are also in the process of setting up a business mentorship programme. We realise that although these sessions were useful, persons wouldn't have got all the information they needed from them. Persons need continued guidance, and so we are identifying and engaging persons who have business minds so we can guide them further," Swaby said.