Basseterre, St. Kitts, November 16, 2021 (SKNIS): The Small Business Development Centre (SBDC), within the Ministry of International Trade, is using the week of November 15-19, dubbed Global Entrepreneurship Week 2021, to highlight the importance of entrepreneurship to the overall growth and development of St. Kitts and Nevis.
The theme for this year’s week-long observation is, “Building Forward Better: Creating Equality and Equity through Entrepreneurship”.
In an address to officially declare the week open, Minister of International Trade, Commerce, Consumer Affairs and Labour, the Honourable Senator Wendy Phipps stated that entrepreneurship is key to socio-economic development, job creation, national competitiveness and wealth creation within the Federation.
“Global Entrepreneurship Week provides the ideal opportunity for our young people to show our country how they can grow businesses from the vision and idea phase, to business planning, to financing and eventually business start-up, in order to sell high quality goods and services in the market in a manner that is driven by consumer demand, business environment, innovation and business trends within the respective sectors of investment. The week of activities is also intended to demonstrate that our successful entrepreneurs are those individuals, regardless of age, who recognize a need or gap in the market, develop a business idea to fill that gap and have willingly taken considerable, measured risks in starting that business with the aim of earning profits from it,” said Minister Phipps.
Minister Phipps used the opportunity to urge entrepreneurs to carefully reinvest back into their businesses in order to achieve sustainable growth.
The Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), which operates a platform of projects and programmes in more than 170 countries aimed at making it easier for anyone, anywhere to start and scale a business, has highlighted Equality and Equity as the two areas of focus for this year’s observation of Global Entrepreneurship Week.
“Equality means that every individual or group is given the same resources or opportunities. Therefore, there should be no discrimination practiced as a result of gender, age, race or socio-economic status. This also means that no one should be marginalized but, instead, have equal access to the system. For entrepreneurs, this equality can be access to such matters as finance, raw materials, and fiscal incentives under the law, business location and staff recruitment. Equity recognizes that although equality is a lofty ideal from which all should benefit, each individual has a different reality or set of circumstances from everyone else and, as such, resources and opportunities must be allocated in a different manner if everyone is to achieve a fair and equal outcome,” said Minister Phipps.
Activities planned in observation of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2021 include a special feature on ‘Highlighting Women in Business’ on November 17, a panel discussion on ZIZ Television on the topic ‘What marketing looks like today: The game changer’ on November 18, and the airing of the final episode of a special feature dubbed “Storytelling”, where entrepreneurs are sharing the challenges and successes of starting and operating their businesses with the public. The final episode in the series will air on November 19 on the SBCD Facebook page.
