This is St. Kitts & Nevis’s 7th year participating in the activities of Global Entrepreneurship Week. Since
our first events in 2013, through the Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Livelihoods and our
many national partners, we have seen not just the number of activities increase, but the all year- round
entrepreneurship ecosystem has improved significantly. The many silos in the enabling environment are
decreasing and partnerships are being built and utilized as tools for resilience and sustainability of
businesses and business development organizations.
We at the Ministry of International Trade, Industry, Commerce & Consumer Affairs are extremely
pleased to be partnering with GEN Caribbean St. Kitts & Nevis, COESL and all the other many national
partners who have joined this movement. We have seen the improvements over the years, the increase
in numbers of partners and events and the deepening interests.
This year GEW has a number of themes and we are pleased to be able to align our events with them.
GEWEducation – Education is key to helping our people to become well rounded, informed and
productive citizens. This GEW we will continue our engagement with schools, working with the very
young to foster their interests and creativity, so that we can effectively grow the next generation of
entrepreneurs in SKN. It is only through education that we will be able to raise awareness of
entrepreneurship as a career choice and GEW as an entrepreneurship ecosystem booster as well as
provide skills training and resources to help our people to become job creators.
GEWEcosystems is a huge one for us. As we work to condense our entrepreneurship ecosystem in SKN
to make it a very well -oiled machine, we will continue to work with our national organizations in every
sector, to ensure that silos are reduced and/or removed. Throughout the week we will be sharing
knowledge, inspiring and connecting individuals to organizations in order to support the development of
our entrepreneurial communities. We intend to highlight some of the organizations which exist to help
entrepreneurs in SKN. Visit the https://www.facebook.com/GENCaribbean.org/ and
https://www.facebook.com/SBDCstkitts during the week to see more.
GEWInclusion – For SKN our ongoing GEN Caribbean GEW theme has been “no one should be left
behind”. We have kept that theme to help us to remember and to remind others that our work is about
everyone, regardless of race, age, gender and background or location in SKN. When everyone does well,
the entire country does well.
GEWPolicy – For us as Government, we have a great supporting role to play by helping our
entrepreneurs in SKN to flourish. We are continuing to remove barriers, reset the regulatory
environment and emphasize connections and catalytic events. All this to support the entrepreneurship
ecosystem which is led by our entrepreneurs.
We look forward to another successful GEW and we would like to express our gratitude to our GEW
host, Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Livelihoods (COESL) and team, along with all our
national partners including our own team here at the Ministry led by Mr. Delaney, Greenland Books and
Things; Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College; UWI Open Campus; Development Bank of St. Kitts & Nevis;
Chamber of Commerce; Anastashia Elliott; Eastern Caribbean Central Bank,Telly Onu; Natasha Leader;
the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Youth, Junior Achievement, Mr. Lennox Warner, St. Kitts Cooperative Credit Union Limited, SKN Village, Flirt Cocktails, Blue Torch Productions, Eqnoxx Photo studio,Muslima, Carib Beacon Marketing Solutions, Media houses, Beyond Capital Markets, Dr. Tamu Browne, Innovation Lab. At the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Bahrain in 2018 SKN was again nominated for an award.I wish for us all a very productive and impactful GEW 2019.
