The first Youth Business Summit opened its doors yesterday at the Pegasus Hotel with the aim of inspiring young entrepreneurs to become their own boss.
A major activity of National Youth Week, the two-day summit was said to have been birthed out of the concerns and challenges young people face when it comes to registering, starting up, and growing businesses, as well as, meeting necessary stakeholders and potential business partners.
Director of Youth, Melissa Carmichael, who spoke to this newspaper, said having analyzed the concerns and challenges presented, they thought it best to host a Youth Business Summit where relevant stakeholders and young people are able to share the same space and pertinent information with regards to business in Guyana, not only regular business programmes, but as it relates to business in terms of the green economy and what’s relevant in the business world.
Coming out of this summit, Carmichael is hoping to see young people make a positive decision to get into business in Guyana.
“Apart from that, we want them to be more comfortable with regards to going to these entities because there is a fear sometimes that as a young person when you show up it becomes a difficult process, so we are hoping they feel more comfortable after this summit to approach these entities with regards to their business,” the Director of Youth said.
“Furthermore, we want the young people across Guyana to understand that the Department of Youth, under the leadership of Dr. (George) Norton have their best interests at heart. We are hearing their concerns and are putting programmes and initiatives in place to address their concerns and the Youth Business Summit is just one of those activities based on [their] concerns that we put together,” she added.
With regards to the turn out, Carmichael said while they had intended to open registration to facilitate 100 persons, they received feedback from close to 300 persons who were interested in participating in the summit.
“We would have opened registration sometime back hoping to capture 100 participants and at that time we captured approximately 300 persons. We had to cut that down to 100 persons, we did so, and we got our quota of 100 today, with other persons coming in to be a part of the summit,” she added.
