Marks calls for digital roadshow for diaspora

Touting the enthusiasm that greeted the Jamaica Social Stock Exchange roadshow from Jamaicans in the diaspora last year, ambassador to the United States Audrey P. Marks has called for the engagement to continue as a “digital roadshow” to reach more people.

“Today’s launch is the start,” she said. “Let’s capitalise on our powerful brand and get the show on the virtual highway!”

She made the proposal while addressing the launch of the Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE)-Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) project ‘Innovating Social Sector Financing’. The event occurred at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston on Tuesday, with the ambassador joining from Washington, D.C., by virtual link-up, focusing her remarks on ‘Mobilising the Diaspora to Support Projects on the JSSE’.

Ambassador Marks thanked Jamaicans in the United States for supporting “this noble cause”. She cited initiatives to benefit under the JSE-IDB project, among them the Alpha Boys’ Music Institute, Choose Life International, Spring Praise Jamaica, Teen Jamaica, and Mona-Tech Engineering Services, which manufactures ventilators for the national COVID-19 relief initiative.

Some 150 social-service groups islandwide, including churches, foundations, non-governmental organisations, and social enterprises – many of them headed by women – as well as 10,000 poor and vulnerable persons, are expected to benefit from the undertaking.

The initiative is being facilitated under a technical cooperation agreement that was signed in December 2019 by the JSE and the IDB, which is providing US$420,000 of the financing. The remaining sum is being provided by the JSE.