Julian Robinson (2nd L), Michael Hemmings, Project Engineer (R), Allison Peart, (2nd R) and Alphie Mullings Aiken, examine the plan for BizTown, during ground breaking ceremony on Friday, Jan 17 JIS photo
The Rotary Club of Kingston will spend approximately $20 million to establish a model business town at the Ministry of Education’s Caenwood complex in Kingston.
The project, dubbed: ‘Junior Achievement (JA) BizTown,’ is targeted at grade five students, seeking to pass on to them practical experience in business operation and management. It is being executed in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Junior Achievement Jamaica (JAJ).
Business education
Allison Peart, President of the Rotary Club of Kingston, speaking at a groundbreaking ceremony at the project site on Friday (January 17), said it was designed to promote business education in the areas of entrepreneurship, financial literacy and work readiness.
She explained that JA BizTown will consist of several simulated company storefronts, in which the students will discover how real businesses work, by performing roles as employers and consumers of various operations.
“The onsite simulation involves a hands-on, intensive, high energy, learning experience that strengthens their classroom learning,” she stated.
Practical experience
Ms. Peart explained that the Rotary Club will be re-fitting a building, donated by the Ministry, with 11 storefronts, each to represent an actual company. Students will be allowed to engage in practical learning experience at these simulated companies for one day, after completing a four to six-week business course.
The curriculum, will include economics, good citizenship and money management.
Julian Robinson, Minister of State in the Ministry of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, and MP for St. Andrew South Eastern, lauded the project, asserting that it will prepare young people to develop their own opportunities.
It will, he said, help them "to understand more what entrepreneurship means as well as what it means to develop an idea and to take an idea from a concept to a business."
Job creation
Mr. Robinson said the initiative will also address the challenges of job creation and the provision of practical hands-on experience to students in the education system.
“The reality of the world that we live in is that there is no government or country, that can provide all the jobs for our young people, and we have to start the process of sensitizing them to the fact that they have to go out and create their own opportunities,” he added.
Alphie Mullings Aiken, President of JAJ, announced that the aim is to reach more than 10,000 grade five students each year through the initiative.
She said local businesses will be approached to support and sponsor storefronts, which will enable the students to benefit holistically from the “in class and real world” experience.
Mrs. Mullings-Aiken pointed out that BizTown is not unique to Jamaica, but it will be the first of its kind in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The BizTown complex is slated to be completed by May of this year.
SOURCE: Jamaica Information Service
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