5 minute read
Weaving a Business Community - Guyana's Brand Youth
A few young Guyanese entrepreneurs have gathered online – a uniform maker, a purveyor of natural hair products, a designer of fashions inspired by indigenous culture. For an hour they chat with more experienced business people – the owner of a social media marketing business, an auto parts supplier, the founder of a tech company that specializes in Artificial Intelligence.
This is Brand YOUth, a community of “purpose-driven entrepreneurs” all woven together by a 59-year-old Guyanese former IT analyst who’s been living in Brooklyn since 1985. “We have all the strands – intellectual, academic, business,” asserts Selwyn Collins, a dapper, charismatic member of the Guyanese diaspora. “What we need are weavers. I am a weaver.”
What he’s weaving is a community of businesspeople with social consciences: people who care about more than just making money and are invested in their community. From his North American perch, he engineered an awards ceremony in 2019 to recognise forty under-40 entrepreneurs in a ceremony at the National Cultural Centre in Georgetown. “I didn’t have a vision for how I was going to utilize this amazing group of young people,” he admits. “I just wanted to celebrate them.”
Since the awards, Brand YOUth has expanded its vision to include more than mentoring and networking. The non-profit is also finding ways to lobby for political decision-making that enhances the ease of doing business. Selwyn has carefully curated a board of like-minded people to spread the notion that the private sector can change Guyana. “Brand YOUth is a think tank for robust discussions about Guyana’s future,” agrees board member and social media marketer Rosh Khan. “It’s networking that doesn’t just elevate you to the next level but also considers those who need to be elevated as well.”
But Brand YOUth didn’t emerge fully formed. It was more of a process, catalysed by Selwyn’s connectivity. Somewhere along his path from working on Wall Street to developing websites and writing a book, he started an online talk show. Conversations with Selwyn allowed him to chat to people like cricketer Clive Lloyd, fashion designer Robert Young, and Yamaha and John Deere distributor, businessman Stanley Ming – eventually recording over 500 interviews on topics of Caribbean interest.
“I look for your patriotic quotient. Do you care about giving back?” Selwyn Collins
“A lot of folks in the diaspora were condemning Guyanese youth,” he recalls. “That was not my experience. But I didn’t know how to effect change in the perception.” So he created a Sunday afternoon segment on his programme specifically for young people. It was another step along the winding path that led eventually to Brand YOUth.
Selwyn’s perspective was that Guyanese politicians had “ripped the potential of the country asunder” by polarizing people into ethnic camps. But he believed that the younger generation, like him, didn’t much care about gender, ethnicity or sexuality. What they valued was quality of life and elevating others. “I look for your patriotic quotient,” he says. “Do you care about giving back?”
And so the weaving continues today, with many strands forming the bigger picture. Indigenous-inspired fashion designer Vanda Allicock now has a platform to articulate her vision of success:
“When you are overflowing with orders, but still find time to help others.” And auto parts dealer Joshua Ramdehol can speak about getting politicians to value business sector input: “We’re not a First World country, but we can get there very quickly with the right systems and management.”
Along with the influx of new businesses and expertise that have accompanied Guyana’s energy boom, comes an expanded market for goods and services. “Entrepreneurs now have the opportunity to create a magnificent country: Guyana 2.0,” says Brand YOUth board member Rosh Khan. “And the young entrepreneur has to be the problem-solver: Look for the gaps in the market, be resourceful, invest in themselves, find complementary partners, and execute together.”
Brand YOUth could be just the type of movement that helps that process along.
A call to invest in Guyana’s SMEs
If it’s ever occurred to you that supporting a community of entrepreneurs could contribute to economic development, you would be right. It’s estimated that Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) contribute 47% of revenue to the United Kingdom’s economy. In the United States, studies show that small businesses account for 44% of U.S. economic activity.
Selwyn Collins says Brand YOUth is committed to a system of apprenticeship to formalize the mentoring relationships already in place. At some point, they’ll need the support of corporate Guyana. “We don’t have a cup to receive funding,” he says. “We are just putting the pieces together. But once we are there, I believe it will be worth their while because we want to build a factory of entrepreneurs.”
