CSR Story
FIRST CITIZENS BANKS ON PRODUCTIVE ENTREPRENEURS
Knowing that small and medium enterprises employ an estimated 200,000 people and generate some 30% of T&T’s GDP, a smart financial institution might find itself particularly committed to a CSR platform that encourages entrepreneurship and improved productivity.
First Citizens has embraced ongoing relationships with three organisations that focus, directly and indirectly, on just such a platform.
1) AMCHAM T&T launched the National Youth Productivity Forum (NYPF) in 2009. “We didn’t like where we (as a country) were heading in terms of productivity,” says Melissa Pierre, AMCHAM’s Senior Trade and Projects Officer, “hence we came up with this forum.”
Title-sponsored by First Citizens since 2016, it attracted 28 secondary schools in 2018, with just under 200 students discussing the effects of health on productivity – from the perspectives of Business, Government, Labour and Civil Society.
The students are prepped for debate by subject experts, like the public health doctor who lectured them in 2018 on the cost of diabetes to employers, before moving on to a moderated discussion where they can question their rivals and fact-check in real time on internet-connected laptops. “The children are usually very passionate about it,” says First Citizens Corporate Communications Manager, Dexter Charles.
Under the forum’s entrepreneurship component, one school manufactured a run of citronella-infused garbage bags for deterring mosquito-breeding in discarded containers.
Pierre says the First Citizens sponsorship has lent credibility to the AMCHAM forum, and made it possible to feed and transport the students and teachers who take part.
Within the First Citizens’ sponsored group of youth entrepreneurs were: Chaguanas North, International School Port of Spain, Mayaro Secondary, Corpus Christi, Woodbrook Secondary, El Dorado, Miracle Ministries and Holy Faith Convent schools.
“It’s not a typical debate – we do not have ‘for’ or ‘against’. What we do is we have students discuss topics from different perspectives, therefore recognizing that solutions aren’t with any one group and it really requires a sort of cooperation.”
Melissa Pierre, Senior Trade and Investment Office at AMCHAM T&T, organiser of the National Youth Productivity Forum
2) The New Fire Festival started in 2016 and for First Citizens it was a case of finding something much bigger than they were seeking. “We were looking for something in the space of ecological responsibility,” admits First Citizens’ Dexter Charles.
The Festival, described by its organisers at the non-profit Trinidad and Tobago Bridge Initiative as a transformational event that gives people the tools to lead more sustainable lifestyles, is certainly green. In 2018, they promoted zero waste by restricting single-use plastics and encouraging festival goers to walk with their water bottles and food containers as they camped and visited food vendors, yoga workshops, performances and an artisans’ market.
But New Fire also created a space for volunteers, many of them millennials, who were exposed to the complex logistics of organizing a multi-day event and had opportunities to meet like-minded people. “They’re able to leverage those connections in the future,” says Trinidad and Tobago Bridge Initiative Director, Elize Rostant. “So we’ve had people who have gotten jobs after volunteering because they met somebody, a different stakeholder, at the festival.”
“People follow us on Instagram and get excited when we make the call for volunteers. And what we’ve found is we have a lot of people that are looking to apply what they’re learning in school to the real world, and we provide them with that opportunity.”
Elize Rostant of the Trinidad and Tobago Bridge Initiative, organiser of the New Fire Festival
3) When the National Secondary Schools Entrepreneurship Competition (NSSEC) launched its business simulation marketplace in 2017, First Citizens was drawn to the novelty. “What attracted us was that it was innovative,” says First Citizens’ Dexter Charles. “They sought to use technology in ways that we have not particularly applied it so far, as a culture.”
Teams of five students made decisions in an online computer store, designing products and setting prices for different machines for distinct target markets. The competition lasted six weeks and it was fierce, with five full scholarships at the Arthur Lok Jack School of Business at stake.
Each team created its own management structure, with some trending towards joint decision-making and others electing a chief executive. In a letter endorsing the competition, the Principal of Parvati Girls’ Hindu College admitted to “heated discussions” that developed conflict resolution skills.
Competitors learned business principles and made mistakes in a space where it was safe to test business theories because the currency wasn’t real but market responses are designed to mimic reality. Sixty schools competed in 2017. Over 100 are expected to participate in 2018.
“One of the things I said at the opening ceremony is, ‘Don’t be a sore loser. You may be doing business with one of these people one day in the future. Business relationships start at this age.’ ”
David Stone of 3Stone Research and Consulting Ltd., organisers of the National Secondary Schools Entrepreneurship Competition
