Ger­ard Best

You re­al­ly don't know what to ex­pect when you put a dozen-plus Caribbean en­tre­pre­neurs in one room for a week.

But one thing was clear when 15 en­tre­pre­neurs–all women–came to­geth­er in Port of Spain in April.It was the start of some­thing good.

The ladies gath­ered­to share ex­pe­ri­ences and build strate­gies for fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tion.Be­sides their Caribbean her­itage and pas­sion for pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, these go-get­ters had some­thing else in com­mon. Each had been com­pet­i­tive­ly se­lect­ed to take part in the first-ever fa­cil­i­ta­tors train­ing for the Women's In­no­va­tion Net­work of the Caribbean (WINC) pro­gram. The ini­tia­tive is a World Bank project to­sup­port­woman en­tre­pre­neurs in the re­gion. It is­fund­ed via the Cana­da De­vel­op­ment Bank.

Theone-week work­shop fo­cused on teach­ing par­tic­i­pants how to run cours­es tar­get­ed at oth­er goal-ori­ent­ed women in their home ter­ri­to­ry. Up to 10 of the 15 would re­ceive fund­ing to run the course for one year. For Ner­is­sa Gold­en, though, the big win wasn't in the fund­ing but the friend­ships.

"This has been an in­cred­i­ble op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with oth­er women who share this same pas­sion for en­tre­pre­neur­ship and em­pow­er­ing oth­ers to launch and grow a busi­ness," she said.

Gold­en­media, the com­pa­ny that she start­ed 12 years ago in Montser­rat, is a small busi­ness root­ed pri­mar­i­ly in the cul­tur­al and tech­nol­o­gy in­dus­tries, and spe­cial­is­ing in pub­lic­i­ty and mul­ti­me­dia con­tent cre­ation for brands and en­tre­pre­neurs.

"The oth­er ladies and I de­cid­ed even be­fore ar­riv­ing in Port of Spain that the greater gift was in hav­ing this new con­nec­tion and aware­ness that we weren't alone in our de­sire to serve our com­mu­ni­ties with busi­ness growth pro­grammes. We're al­ready ex­plor­ing ways that we can work to­geth­er to help each oth­er achieve our busi­ness goals long af­ter the project fund­ing runs out. Each woman is a pro­fes­sion­al in var­i­ous dis­ci­plines and so the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from them has been quite a gift. We've all been strength­ened by be­ing able to con­nect and find com­mon ground on which we want to build fu­ture col­lab­o­ra­tions."

Breed­ing en­tre­prise

WINC is part of the En­tre­pre­neur­ship Pro­gram for In­no­va­tion in the Caribbean (EPIC), which is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed by in­foDev, a glob­al mul­ti­donor pro­gram in the Trade and Com­pet­i­tive­ness Glob­al Prac­tice of the World Bank Group, with sup­port from Cana­da's For­eign Af­fairs, Trade and De­vel­op­ment (DFATD).

The pro­gram is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed across the re­gion by En­ter­prise Hub a T&T-based com­pa­ny spe­cial­is­ing in pro­vid­ing sup­port ser­vices to a wide range of start-ups and es­tab­lished en­tre­pre­neurs. En­ter­prise Hub founder and lead con­sul­tant Ash­ley Mitchell, him­self an en­tre­pre­neur, said that "in­ter­me­di­ary agen­cies," such as the World Bank's in­foDev, can be a sig­nif­i­cant source of fi­nan­cial sup­port for bud­ding busi­ness­es.

Be­yond sim­ply act­ing as a bridge to start-up fi­nanc­ing, En­ter­prise Hub works along­side the busi­ness own­ers to open their eyes to fresh op­por­tu­ni­ty, en­hance their abil­i­ty for in­no­va­tion and in­crease their tol­er­ance for risk-tak­ing.En­cour­ag­ing peo­ple to take ini­tia­tive and chal­lenge re­ceived wis­dom–even with­in the con­straints of a full-time job–is cru­cial to un­lock­ing the re­gion's en­tre­pre­neur­ial po­ten­tial, Mitchell said.

"Our young peo­ple have been con­di­tioned and shep­erd­ed over time to sim­ply get on a track of aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suit. There's noth­ing wrong with that but it's not for every­one. Some of our Caribbean peo­ple are very will­ing to take en­tre­pre­neur­ial risks but that abil­i­ty is not be­ing har­nessed in a con­struc­tive way by our for­mal ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems."

En­tre­pre­neur­ship, says Mitchell, is a mind­set. And you can act en­tre­pre­neuri­al­ly even with­out ever leav­ing your job, he said.

Nor should lo­cal en­tre­pre­neur­ship de­pend on for­eign agen­cies or even na­tion­al gov­ern­ments, Gold­en un­der­scored.

"En­tre­pre­neur­ship is still one of the sexy top­ics for gov­ern­ments and in­ter­na­tion­al donor agen­cies. How­ev­er, we have to see it not as a 'hot top­ic' but es­sen­tial to how every na­tion is go­ing to grow its econ­o­my."

More co­he­sion is need­ed in how pro­grams are im­ple­ment­ed across the Caribbean, as many have the sim­i­lar goals but re­sources are not used ef­fi­cient­ly, she said.

"I would like to see more en­tre­pre­neurs be­ing giv­en the ca­pac­i­ty to un­leash their ideas by hav­ing the fi­nan­cial sup­port they need, the the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge and the ac­cess to mar­kets. Bot­tom line is en­tre­pre­neur­ship chal­lenges won't be solved by gov­ern­ments, on­ly en­tre­pre­neurs can do that," she said.

A life's work

Gold­en par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Grow Your Busi­ness boot camp, an­oth­er WINC project, in 2013 and 2014, and be­fore that had been work­ing with en­tre­pre­neurs for more than 10 years, through Gold­en­media.

"My vi­sion is to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for the Caribbean to grow and an im­por­tant way to do this is through the me­dia. Most of what will gen­er­ate rev­enue and trans­form our na­tions are the ideas in­side of us wait­ing to be un­leashed. I like be­ing a part of pro­vid­ing the plat­forms as well as guid­ing how these mes­sages can con­nect with the peo­ple ready to hear it."

She said she saw WINC as a way to con­tin­ue with her life's work.

"Much of the work I do is cen­tered around job cre­ation and em­pow­er­ment, so this is an ex­ten­sion of that. I be­gan host­ing my own en­tre­pre­neur­ship con­fer­ences in 2006 sim­ply be­cause I re­alised oth­er peo­ple had the same need as I did to learn about start­ing a busi­ness."

The lat­est WINC ini­tia­tive, co­or­di­nat­ed by the En­ter­prise Hub, cov­ered eight sub­ject ar­eas in­clud­ing Mar­ket­ing, Tech­nol­o­gy, Net­work­ing and Fi­nan­cial Man­age­ment, giv­ing Gold­en and oth­ers rich re­source from which to draw for fu­ture growth.

"I am look­ing for­ward to first im­ple­ment­ing the new ideas I learned or were re­in­forced this week to help my com­pa­ny con­tin­ue along a growth path, then it will be ex­tend­ed out to Montser­rat and neigh­bour­ing is­lands," she said.