Gen-Caribbean Kicks off Entrepreneurs Startup Huddles in two Caribbean Cities

August 2018

As part of the outcomes of Global Entrepreneurship Congress 2018, held in Turkey in April, Gen-Caribbeans’ Director with responsibility for implementing Start Up Huddle, Dr Ashley John and team, coordinated the first Start Up Huddle, in Kingstown St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

This session was held in partnership,  with  Edge Media Centre, Roseau Sion Hill earlier in May 2018.

GEN Caribbean’s Managing Director, Dr. Marcia Brandon, supported by GEN-Caribbean’s Director Dr. Ashley John, has successfully hosted the first “Start Up Huddle” in Bridgetown, Barbados.

The start up huddle was in partnership with Atlantic Impact, the Caribbean Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Livelihoods (COESL) and Constructive Solutions Inc.(CS Inc.).

Startup Huddle is a program designed by the Global Entrepreneurship Congress based in Washington D.C USA, to educate, engage and connect entrepreneurs. As an experiential learning opportunity, the Startup Huddle format is consistent in each location; on a given day, one or two early-stage startup founders give a six-minute presentation of their businesses to a diverse audience of peers, mentors, educators and advisers.

Each presentation is followed by a 20-minute question and answer session and feedback from the audience. The culture surrounding Startup Huddle is that of a supportive, neutral space, welcoming entrepreneurs to be open and honest about their businesses and the challenges they face.

Dr. Marcia Brandon, and Dr. Ashley John are two of the Caribbean’s pioneers in entrepreneurship development and are now sharing these global best practices as part of GEN Caribbean’s strategy by national ecosystem leaders in their respective countries to help entrepreneurs and strengthen the ecosystem.

Participants included, Barbadian young green tech entrepreneur Joshua Forte, Founder and CEO of RED DIAMOND Compost, Secondary school students from Atlantic Impact and College students from East Michigan University of Detroit, USA.  This is an annual global school to work transition program created by social entrepreneurs, Ms. Anise Hayes of Atlantic Impact and Dr. Marcia Brandon 5 years ago.

Dr. Brandon stated that “Our first start up huddle as GEN Caribbean has been a success.  Building the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the Caribbean has to be on the right track when our global partners choose our countries to visit as a knowledge acquiring mission in entrepreneurship.  The students, peer mentors, entrepreneurs and programme managers have all benefited from the presentations, questions, answers and lessons learnt.  We look forward to the next one coming soon.”

Gen-Caribbean’s Director with responsibility for implementing Start Up Huddle, Dr Ashley John said, “This was a great exercise in building more entrepreneurs and strengthening the local and global ecosystem.  Forming more multilateral partnerships that complement each other’s work is a strategy that is essential to seeing our Caribbean becoming a resilient, economic space. We have the resources and we have the capacity but we need to value our people more, build trust and utilize their abilities to help improve our objective of each person achieving economic freedom and a sustainable livelihood”.

@Gen-Caribbean 2018