The Belize Trade and Investment Development Service (BELTRAIDE) in collaboration with infoDev, a World Bank Group, hosted a one day workshop with stakeholders to chart a way to foster an innovative entrepreneurship ecosystem in Belize.

This workshop, which was held at the ITVET Dining room in Belize City on Monday February 29^th, brought together incubator managers, entrepreneurs, academics, government officials, the media, donors and investors to facilitate the development of a collaborative approach to building a sustainable ecosystem for entrepreneurship and innovation.

The workshop, entitled ‘Accelerate Caribbean’s Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development’, is part of the Accelerate Caribbean Project, which forms part of a seven-year, $20M Entrepreneurship Program of Innovation in the Caribbean, (EPIC). The objective of this project is to strengthen entrepreneurship and boost job creation across 14 CARICOM countries, including Belize. The project is designed by InfoDev and implemented by IMC Worldwide.

The Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development Workshop will be followed by a three-day Accelerate Caribbean’s Business Incubation Management (BIM) Training from Tuesday, March 1st to Thursday, March 3rd, 2016 (ongoing), this is being held at BTEC training room.

BIM is designed for business incubation managers and other stakeholders wishing to increase their understanding and know-how of the business incubation process. Topics such as “planning and managing and incubator”, “monitoring, and evaluating an incubator” is part of the agenda.

Speakers of the workshop on Feb 29th included Ms. Sophia Muradyan, infoDev, from the World Bank Group, Natalia Pipia, team leader for Accelerate Caribbean, Kim Aikman, CEO from the Belize Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and a panel of private sector representatives.

This initiative was developed in tandem with Belize’s newly National Entrepreneurship Strategy.

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