By Aisha Tamba
Gam-MINDS Foundation over the weekend trained 50 young people on entrepreneurship and pitching competition.
With support from the US Embassy Banjul, the training took place at the Gambia Pastoral Institute, GPI, and exposed participants to various areas of entrepreneurship including community entrepreneurship.
Secretary Evou Lawrence Mendy, said Gam-MINDS is a youth-led organisation that seeks to bring the best out of the next generation by motivating, inspiring, nurturing, developing and supporting positive ideas.
“We divided the programme into two phases where the first day was for training and the second day was a pitching competition where the participants will pitch their ideas in front of judges and the best 20 ideas will meet on the 29th of this month. We will then take the best ten ideas and mentor them for a year, giving them a capital of D10,000 as a startup,” he said.
Gabriel A Gomez, founder and president of Gam-MINDS said the foundation has engaged schools in more than 8 communities in West Coast Region on career mentoring and development.
“We have engaged more than 12,000 young people on career development and we have also organised 2 business seminars. So many young people have now started business because Gam-MINDS helped them with a start-up.”
Emilian Mendy, a participant and a micro business operator, said knowledge gained from the training will help improve her business.
“I believe my business will grow and I will employ some other people thereby create jobs for them. The training was a success and we have learnt a lot.”
