This October the inaugural NOW Nestlé Caribbean Youth Summit is planning to impact 10,000 young people across the region. The formal address will be delivered by Caricom chairman and Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne, and the feature speaker will be Daymond John, star of the reality pitch show Shark Tank and founder/CEO of apparel company Fubu.
The two-day virtual event is being held October 5-6 for Caribbean youth aged 16-29 (though people outside that age range will not be deterred from registering) and is free to all participants.
Siti Jones-Gordon, head of corporate communications at Nestlé Anglo Dutch Caribbean, told Newsday in an interview the origin of the summit was the Nestlé Needs Youth Programme, which started globally in 2013. She noted Nestlé CEO for Zone Americas Laurent Freixe championed the creation of the programme and its rollout around the world, and it was developed because of the high level of youth unemployment, at the time, in Europe.
[caption id="attachment_914843" align="alignnone" width="684"] Head of corporate communications at Nestlé Anglo Dutch Caribbean Siti Jones-Gordon. -[/caption]
"So it started from a place of wanting to increase the employability of young people."
She said in the Caribbean there were similar issues of youth who were educated but still finding difficulty getting a job or accessing support for entrepreneurship or agripreneurship.
It was rolled out first to Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean in 2015, then Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, St Lucia and Turks and Caicos.
Jones-Gordon said the programme has had an impact on 38,000 young people in the region in four key areas or "pillars": getting skilled through workshops to increase employability implemented with the assistance of Nestlé's Alliance for YOUth partners (governments, foundations, youth organisations, academia and the private sector): getting more opportunities through internships and "enternships" (entry-level positions); getting support via mentorship and networking: and getting hired, with 218 young people hired for vacant positions at Nestle Trinidad and Jamaica over the past six years.
She said the summit is being held at a pivotal point after Nestlé's investment in developing youth over the past six years as a corporate entity.
"And now we believe, even more so, youth needed to be inspired, they need to be excited, because we are seeing there is a restriction of economies across the Caribbean spurred on even more by covid19."
She said there are so many youths who are budding entrepreneurs, or are already operating as entrepreneurs, and need support and guidance, or who are graduating with great grades but finding difficulty in getting jobs because there are fewer jobs available. She added young people are more vulnerable to losing their jobs under the system of last in, first out.
The summit
The company planned to hold the summit last year but because of the "curveball" of covid19, the organisers d
