CBZ empowerment scheme reaches climax

Source: CBZ empowerment scheme reaches climax – DailyNews Live

BUSINESS WRITER      7 March 2017

HARARE – Zimbabwe’s largest financial services group by asset base, CBZ
Holdings (CBZ), said its ambitious $40 000 entrepreneurship empowerment
programme has reached the climax with winners expected to be announced
this week.

The project, which has resulted in over 660 youths being trained by CBZ in
financial literacy since October last year, will see winners getting $3
000 to start businesses.

CBZ said winners will be selected based on their biggest successes since
they started participating in the programme, how they managed to tackle
challenges they faced in their business and on their effective use of
capital money among other things.

CBZ marketing and corporate affairs executive, Laura Gwatiringa, recently
said the group’s Youth Entrepreneurs Programme (Yep) identified and
nurtured a new generation of growth-oriented business persons.

“Many young Zimbabweans graduating from universities, colleges and high
schools have no option but to become entrepreneurs due to lack of
employment.

“Most of the businesses started by these young people are essentially
survivalist self-employment initiatives with limited, if any, growth
prospects,” she said.

Gwatiringa noted that despite the need to make serious inroads into the
corporate sector, such businesses do not create employment for others and
have a low impact on the development of the country.

“Yep seeks to address this need by inculcating a growth mind-set and
ensuring the development of practices that foster business growth in young
entrepreneurs through educational workshops and follow-up reinforcement
activities,” she added.

The first phase of the programme was completed in the period October to
December last year with workshops being held in Chinhoyi, Mutare,
Marondera, Bindura, Gweru, Bulawayo, Hwange, Gwanda, Masvingo and Harare.

The second phase of the programme concluded with the participants being
given a number of individual and group assignments to complete.

In the third and final phase 20 participants were selected from the
current 100 and will receive seed capital to invest in their businesses.

Gwatiringa said based on this assessment the final top 10 participants
will be selected as winners.

The 10 winners will receive cash prizes of amounts ranging from $600 to $3
000 for investing in their businesses.

“To ensure that a critical mass of growth-oriented young entrepreneurs is
produced, CBZ will invest substantial resources into the programme and is
already planning to run the programme again during the second half of 2017
with a completely new crop of young entrepreneurs.

“It is the vision of the partnering organisations to see a significant
number of participants’ businesses maturing into strong, sustainable,
profitable businesses generating substantial revenues, employing
considerable numbers of employees and impacting the economy positively,”
she added.