Pe­ter Christo­pher

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed

The re­gion­al con­nec­tions of JMMB have come to the aid of sev­er­al fe­male en­tre­pre­neurs.

At the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the bank’s “Pow­er­ful Women in Busi­ness Pro­gramme” which took place on Wednes­day evening at JMMB’s bank, Ch­agua­nas, grad­u­ates hailed the in­ter-re­gion­al con­nec­tions that were made dur­ing the ex­er­cise.

Ten par­tic­i­pants took part in the six-month train­ing pro­gramme ho­n­our­ing women who have bold­ly em­braced en­tre­pre­neur­ship and lead­er­ship as they shared their in­sights with Guardian Me­dia Ltd.

“My ex­pe­ri­ence in the pro­gramme has been very good. It re­al­ly was tar­get­ed to­wards the chal­lenges that women face in terms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in terms of cri­sis man­age­ment, in terms of mar­ket­ing and even per­son­al de­vel­op­ment,” Tis­han­na Si­mon of Tis­han­na Si­mon Da­ta Min­ders Busi­ness Re­search said.

She added that par­tic­i­pants, in par­tic­u­lar, ben­e­fit­ed from in­ter­act­ing with oth­er women across the re­gion, gain­ing ad­di­tion­al per­spec­tives and net­work­ing op­tions as a re­sult.

“I think there was some­thing for every­one and as well. I think the best part of it is to know. It’s like you get to know what Ja­maica has go­ing on be­cause it’s not just Trinidad and To­ba­go. It’s Ja­maica as well and Ja­maica has a lot go­ing on,” Si­mon not­ed.

She fur­ther stat­ed that her ex­pe­ri­ence has helped ex­pand her ap­proach, gen­er­al­ly.

“How we com­mu­ni­cate with the new group as well, al­lows us to learn. To learn from each oth­er and con­nect with each oth­er. Even right now as a re­searcher, re­cent­ly, I in­vit­ed a Ja­maican re­searcher who’s in the group to be part of a con­sul­tan­cy ap­pli­ca­tion,” Si­mon ex­plained.

The bank’s re­gion­al reach al­so ben­e­fit­ed Ja­maican busi­ness­woman Sta­cy-Ann Wil­son, of Odem Cre­ative Me­dia Ltd who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­gramme in Trinidad.

On how it has en­riched her Wil­son shared, “I’m a unique par­tic­i­pant in that. I reg­is­tered my busi­ness in Trinidad. So even though I was Ja­maican, I was liv­ing in Trinidad and my busi­ness was reg­is­tered here, but I ap­plied through the pro­gramme for my branch in Ja­maica. What it has af­ford­ed me, I think, is great net­work­ing be­tween the two coun­tries. My clients are in the East­ern Caribbean is­lands, so JMMB pro­gramme has helped me to be able to man­age things like pay­ments and so on.”

This was the sec­ond co­hort of the pro­gramme and par­tic­i­pants were not on­ly giv­en train­ing from the JMMB team but were al­so men­tored by par­tic­i­pants in the ini­tial phase.

Noa­mi An­der­son, the own­er of Uni­cak­ery in Port-of-Spain, served in such a role as a grad­u­ate of the first group.

She said while she shared her ex­pe­ri­ence, she was al­so able to learn from the lat­est group.

“The men­tor­ship as­pect of the pro­gramme, I would say was some­thing that was re­al­ly worth­while for me. I was able to ac­tive­ly ap­ply the things that I was learn­ing in the pro­gramme in re­al-time to my busi­ness and just kind of see the re­sults in re­al time. I def­i­nite­ly think it’s worth­while,” An­der­son said.

The JMMB team al­so stat­ed it had learnt from the pre­vi­ous group, adding that would be tak­ing lessons from the lat­est group as it pre­pared for the next co­hort.

“Co­hort two would have been a lit­tle more ro­bust in terms of what was of­fered as the feed­back from co­hort one would have pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion in terms of the ar­eas that (the women) would like to get more in­for­ma­tion on. We would have ramped up in those ar­eas and made more fa­cil­i­ta­tion for them,” Chan­tal Pereira, JMMB’s coun­try cor­po­rate mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er said.

Par­tic­i­pants al­so re­ceived a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in loan ap­pli­ca­tions dur­ing the pro­gramme and a mu­tu­al fund ac­count in the name of their busi­ness with an ini­tial de­posit of $1,000.