Ife Badejo and Finance Minister Ardwell Irion going over the finance assignment of a finalist team.
PHILIPSBURG--Seven teams will be pitching for a chance to win a NAf.10,000 cash prize in the National Youth Pitch Competition on November 20.
The seven teams, Caribbean International Academy, Learning Unlimited, Milton Peters College, St. Dominic High, St. Maarten Academy, St. Maarten Academy PSVE, and St. Maarten Vocational Training School, will each have two minutes to pitch in front of a jury panel. The jury panellists will have 10 minutes to ask questions and then score the teams. Judges will score based on criteria such as creativity, viability, scalability, leadership, and presentation. The highest scoring team will win NAf. 10,000 and an entrepreneurial trip abroad in 2023. In addition, the audience (in-person and streaming) will be able to choose their favourite pitch. The ‘crowd favourite’ will win NAf. 2,500.
The teams have gone through a six-week accelerator programme where they have learned more about key components of being an entrepreneur such as gaining clarity on their business model, better understanding their finances, how to do market research and understand their customers, how to measure success and key performance indicators, it was stated in a press release.
Coaches in the accelerator included Michiel Parent (Chief Commercial Manager at TelEm); Sabrina Jno-Baptiste of Data Driven, Vincentia Rosen-Sandiford (Director of the Bureau for Intellectual Property of St. Maarten), Damien Schmidt (Project Coordinator at Princess Juliana Airport) and the Minister of Finance Ardwell Irion.
Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) is an entrepreneurship campaign with national hosts in more than 180 countries and 20,000 local partner organisations. Powered by the Global Entrepreneurship Network and with support of Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, GEW 2022 celebrates 15 years of promoting entrepreneurship around the world. This year, throughout November 14 - 20th, countries will host activities under the key themes: ecosystems, inclusion, education, and policy.
As a part of the GEW Dutch Caribbean, St. Maarten officially joins Global Entrepreneurship 2022, with Ife Badejo, a local entrepreneurship advocate and founder of Islandpreneur as its host
During GEW Sint Maarten, there will be several activities to emphasize this, including a social media campaign, launch of The Islandpreneur Podcast and the finals of the very first National Youth Pitch Competition, where seven teams from seven schools will pitch to win NAf. 10,000 and a trip abroad.
The National Youth Pitch Competition is organised by the Ministry of Finance and Islandpreneur and was designed to increase financial literacy among the youth, hone their entrepreneurial skills and cultivate innovative thinking, while creating a platform for them to share solutions.
For more information, visit www.islandpreneur.co or connect to Islandpreneur Facebook page (www.fb.com/iamislandpreneur ). For inquiries, contact the team at Islandpreneur at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or +1721-520-0033 (WhatsApp).
