Re­pub­lic Bank yes­ter­day launched the third co­hort of its En­tre­pre­neurs Busi­ness Builder (EBB) pro­gramme as part of the bank's cel­e­bra­to­ry ini­tia­tives across the re­gion aimed at mark­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD) to­day.

In a news re­lease, Re­pub­lic Bank said that as it did last year, it is look­ing for 80 Caribbean women en­tre­pre­neurs to em­pow­er them to build fu­ture-proof, prof­itable and sus­tain­able busi­ness­es.

The EBB pro­gramme, de­vel­oped and fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Busi­ness and Peo­ple De­vel­op­ment As­so­ciates (BPD), and made pos­si­ble through Re­pub­lic Bank’s Pow­er to Make a Dif­fer­ence pro­gramme, was spe­cial­ly craft­ed with women en­tre­pre­neurs in mind. One hun­dred and eleven women from across Re­pub­lic Bank’s sub­sidiary ter­ri­to­ries suc­cess­ful­ly grad­u­at­ed from the first two co­horts.

In a con­grat­u­la­to­ry mes­sage, Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr. Car­la Bar­nett laud­ed the con­cep­tu­al­i­sa­tion and in­tro­duc­tion of the EBB Pro­gramme, which she de­scribes as a bold and im­por­tant ini­tia­tive, pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ing Caribbean women.

“Open­ing the way for more women to be­come en­tre­pre­neurs is one way to pro­pel the eco­nom­ic and so­cial ad­vance­ment of our coun­tries,” Bar­nett added.

In launch­ing yes­ter­day, Re­pub­lic Bank said it sees the pro­gramme’s rel­e­vance to the top 2024 IWD themes “In­spire In­clu­sion” and “In­vest in Women, Ac­cel­er­ate Progress” as the EBB pro­gramme in­vites women en­tre­pre­neurs to seek lead­er­ship and busi­ness growth.

The aim of the pro­gramme is to ad­vance gen­der par­i­ty among en­tre­pre­neurs and build­ing sus­tain­able busi­ness com­mu­ni­ties.

A max­i­mum of 80 Caribbean women en­tre­pre­neurs with a min­i­mum of two years of en­tre­pre­neur­ial ex­pe­ri­ence will now have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ap­ply to EBB's five-month, self-paced on­line learn­ing pro­gramme. Par­tic­i­pants can al­so qual­i­fy to re­ceive up to 80 per cent schol­ar­ship fund­ing, said Re­pub­lic Bank.

The pro­gramme will take a sys­tem­at­ic ap­proach to en­sure that the learn­ings, strate­gies, and tac­tics im­ple­ment­ed will gen­er­ate long-last­ing re­sults for all busi­ness­es in­volved. It is ex­pect­ed that by its con­clu­sion, the par­tic­i­pants will have busi­ness­es that are stronger, more ro­bust and demon­strate ac­cel­er­at­ed growth.

The reg­is­tra­tion process will end on Sun­day 31, March and all ap­pli­cants will be in­formed of the out­come of the se­lec­tion process by May 2023.

To learn more and reg­is­ter on­line please vis­it www.re­pub­lictt.com/ebb.