AN­NA-LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings is en­cour­ag­ing young en­tre­pre­neurs to con­tin­ue striv­ing for suc­cess.

He urged them not to let dis­ap­point­ments hin­der their progress or in­ter­rupt their stride. In­stead, he ad­vised, “You pos­si­bly may not get it right the first time, you may not get it right the sec­ond time. You are go­ing to get some chal­lenges, some peo­ple are go­ing to be sup­port­ive, some peo­ple are go­ing to be very crit­i­cal of what you do and you just take it in stride.”

De­liv­er­ing these sen­ti­ments dur­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the NED­CO Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship Awards 2023 on Sat­ur­day night at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, Cum­mings said: “As long as you per­se­vere, if it is some­thing you re­al­ly want to do, then you are go­ing to be suc­cess­ful.”

Out­lin­ing just how these en­tre­pre­neurs were con­tribut­ing to the econ­o­my, he said be­sides cre­at­ing jobs, they were al­so ex­pand­ing their reach, touch­ing the lives of peo­ple, and set­ting an ex­am­ple for oth­ers who were look­ing on.

Cum­mings said his min­istry was in­tent on nur­tur­ing job cre­ators rather than job seek­ers as they want­ed to break the mold of what is ex­pect­ed.

He said, “For too long, our sys­tem has sort of pushed our stu­dents in­to a sort of work­ing class kind of men­tal­i­ty...do well so you can get a good job.”

How­ev­er, he said this was now chang­ing as, “We are say­ing to you ... do well and open your own busi­ness so that you can have peo­ple work­ing for you.”

Re­count­ing the chal­lenges he faced as a young busi­ness­man start­ing out, the min­is­ter said Gov­ern­ment had re­cent­ly ap­proved a Small and Mi­cro Busi­ness Grant in the sum of $20,000 which will be un­der the am­bit of NED­CO, and which bud­ding en­tre­pre­neurs will be able to ac­cess to grow their ideas.

He re­vealed, “In the next fis­cal year, we are go­ing to be spend­ing up­wards of $20 mil­lion, touch­ing the lives of 1,000 per­sons who have an idea you’ve trained up.”

In ad­di­tion, Cum­mings said the min­istry was work­ing to es­tab­lish a Youth Busi­ness Park to pro­vide a space for young en­tre­pre­neurs to show­case their prod­ucts and ser­vices.

Pleased with the work be­ing done by NED­CO, he said 60 per cent of the Small and Mi­cro Busi­ness Grant will be re­served for young per­sons.