 Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce, International Trade, Investment, Enterprise Development and Consumer Affairs, Ms. Sophia Henry, Investing Lucia's CEO, Mr. Roderick Cherry and members of Investing Lucia's Board of Directors, members of the Task Force and Boost Key Partners, most importantly, the seven finalists of the National Idea Pitch Competition, members of the press, ladies and gentlemen, and everyone joining us on NTN Live and social media, good morning. Welcome to the official closing ceremony for the National Idea Pitch Competition. I am your host for this morning, Claudia McDowell. The competition was launched in January of this year and seven finalists earned their spot in a program which would help develop their idea into a business. At the end of the business development program, the finalists were now ready to pitch their fully developed idea to a panel of judges to win access to more resources, including seed funding. The finals took place on Monday, this Monday, April 26, 2021 at the NTN Studios and now that the judges have thoroughly deliberated, we are here to celebrate the winners. But first, we like to do things a little differently at Investing Lucia. So we're going to start this ceremony with a vote of thanks of sorts. Now, if you've never been called by our first speaker, you either not supposed to be here or he hasn't saved your number yet. Allow me to welcome the man behind the magic and the person without which I'm sure none of us, none of this would be happening, the Boost program coordinator, Mr. Dinesh Daswani. Good morning, everyone. Our lecture dot protocol has been already established. My name is Dinesh Daswani and my job this morning is to welcome you to all to today's closing and award ceremony of the National Idea Pitch Competition. Here, we will reward the exceptional work of which seven finalists have put together over the past two months. I am the program coordinator for Boost, which has paired the National Idea Pitch Competition alongside other stakeholders. On behalf of the entire Boost team and its task force, Investing Lucia, our seven finalists, I want to thank you. We are pleased that you can take the time out to celebrate and support these national finalists. Everyone faces challenge in their daily lives. At some point across the globe, there's always a class of imaginative and innovative people who seek to make some of these challenges less cumbersome and eliminate them completely. That class is our society entrepreneurs and today, I'm proud to say, we have seven of the most creative with us. Boost would like to thank them all as well for taking the leap of courage and deciding to start their business through our competition. The National Idea Pitch Competition started in January 2021 to simulate budding entrepreneurs into doing what they do best, creating innovative ideas to solve problems. Through the competition, Boost aided the developing these very ideas into functional businesses, which will meet the challenges of our society. We received over 60 applications during the first round of this competition, which included transformative ideas in almost every major economic sector. These applications were judged by a very capable panel of experienced entrepreneurs in the field and now are down to seven finalists, which are here with us today. Then they were entered to a business development program, which majority of the sessions were done virtually due to our new normal. And these sessions were provided by both private and public sectors in the business development field. Many of them are represented here today and truly stepped up and provided our partners with the necessary tools and vital information needed for business success despite the limitations of our virtual environment. Boost would like to immensely thank every single business development organization for their time and efforts towards the finalists. As part of the business development program, the finalists also got to meet experienced mentors on a one-on-one basis. During these meetings, they were able to seek valuable answers to many burning questions, review their business strategies and practice their pitches. These sessions were immensely helpful to all of them to reach achieve specific goals. Boost would like to generally thank each mentor for the time and efforts given. Your mentorship has been invaluable inspiration to many of our finalists and you have changed lives. Today we are here to celebrate the growth and achievements made by our seven finalists as I said before. Although we are awarding winners today, every team has already been rewarded with valuable educational opportunities and experiences. This will not be possible without our partners and sponsors who met the goal to create such opportunities. You have created an avenue for continued growth and development for these innovative ideas, which is priceless. To our strategic and community partners, Startup Space, Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, the Small Business Development Center, Exports Senlutia, TriTech, Penny Pinch, the Senlutia Development Bank, the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, the Senlutia Bureau of Standards, Adana Consulting, the Chamber of Commerce and by extension, the Youth Senlutia Youth Business Trust and a team at Invest Senlutia. You make the dreams of these imaginative entrepreneurs a reality. To our many knowledgeable judges who took their time out to assess these presentations last Monday, we truly are grateful for your efforts. Thank you all for choosing to be part of this historical event. Alone, we can do so little. Together, we can do so much. A quote by the remarkable Helen Keller. This quote stands true to the very core of what BOO stands for and the National Idea Pitch Competition. And I'll leave you with one word I will sum up that, unity. If unity for both public and private sectors, entities, mentors, community partners and willing individuals, we were able to create a new avenue for innovative and imaginative solutions to generate wealth, to provide for the betterment of the communities, to build a stronger environment for entrepreneurship and to develop a new culture of collaboration and networking. This would indeed boost our fair Helen, our island home and our country. Thank you. Thank you, Dinesh, for your remarks. Please allow me to also welcome Mr. Miguel Trim from UNDP. He's the deputy team leader of Cary Secure. Dinesh said thank you for many people. However, I want to just list the seven finalists for everybody here and everybody listening to know who was competing for the top prize. We have tropical kayak adventures, check-in, real 3D printing, Ed Telligent, Caribbean City, 360 and Bioganics. They are represented here today in the orange shirts and I think we have one or two blue ones. Okay, our next speaker is, he served as a head judge on the panel for the finals of the National Idea Pitch Competition on Monday. He is Mr. Jody Boodoo and he's also the deputy chairman for the board of directors of Investing Lucia. He is a co-founder and director of the business development at Avans, a boutique deal structuring and project finance consultancy in Saint Lucia. He is also a general partner at Aspire Fund Management Company, a fund management and private equity investment company based in Trinidad. His latest venture has been in Penny Pinch Incorporated, Saint Lucia's only licensed mobile digital wallet and loyalty solutions platform. He is the director and a seed investor. He led the boost steering committee as the chairman during the research consultancy and launch stages of the incubator and accelerator program. Now, please allow me to welcome Mr. Jody Boodoo to the podium. Morning everyone. Please permit me to adopt the protocol already established. I'd like to thank everybody for attending this morning. Welcome to anyone who is watching at home as well. This has been a pretty, it's been a long haul for Investing Lucia. I remember it had to have been about three or four years ago. The concept of an incubator and accelerator program was introduced from management to the board of Investing Lucia. It was something that I have a particular passion for, that is startups and small business and investing. So, you know, I kind of put up my hands and said, well, let me lead it, you know. Somebody has to take ownership of it because it had been a long time coming. Something had been proposed back in 2010 and for one reason or another didn't gain traction. So, you know, as with anything else, unless somebody takes ownership of something, it really, you know, it might not happen. So I jumped in and we put a team together. Dave Hadley was appointed as the program coordinator and the CEO of Investing Lucia, Roderick Cherry, oversaw it. Yes, I was the chair of the steering committee, mainly from a policy standpoint and just making sure they get the resources they needed. But, you know, I have to take my hats off to the CEO and to Dave for really pushing through boost. So, you know, a few years later, a lot of work went into it and voila, we had boost. Now, boost is at its infancy stages. So it's an entire ecosystem of entrepreneurship and startup development that we want to build. But there has to be a spark and investing Lucia cannot do everything on its own. All the participants in boost have to give positive feedback, great energy, give time and resources to make not just boost the success, but the whole entrepreneurship ecosystem in Saint Lucia. It's a success that's dependent on all the players. So you guys were here today. It takes mentors, it takes professional services, it takes seed investors, it takes, you know, the likes of SLDB, all the other government agencies that seem to have been operating in silos at one point in the past. We want to bring it together under one nucleus which is boost. So, Danish was hired to lead the charge with boost in many respects and we came up with the national idea of pitch competition. I'm sure a lot of you have seen pitch competitions before where people have either an MVP or they're already in the revenue stages of their business and they're looking to raise further capital. So they'll be pitching for equity or they'll be pitching to give equity rather in exchange for capital. But there is this gap there. How do you actually get to that stage where you're pitching for equity? I have seen in the past that people simply weren't ready at that stage and they've presented their concepts at that stage and, you know, it kind of got shot down. But with the national idea of pitch competition, it's a bit different. So it is getting an idea that you have ready, almost packaging it properly as a business case, and then presenting it to a panel which would say, you know what, we really like your concept. However, probably you need to do a few things differently. Or maybe you are ready to get to that pitch stage. So it's getting you ready to face the world because it's tough out there. There's a lot of disappointments with startups when they get to the pitching stage. And, you know, you have to have that passion and that grit to stick with it if you don't make it the first time. So with the national idea pitch competition, I mean, we've appealed to the Executive Committee at Investing to ensure that through the Board that the national idea pitch competition is going to be an annual event. We see a lot of merit in it. I really enjoyed being part of it. I think the mentors and all the other judges and the staff enjoy being part of the national idea pitch competition and seeing the sorts of seeds that it can plant in society from very early. Because this is what it's really about, is about planting seeds. My hope is that everybody who participated in the national idea pitch competition would achieve a change of mindset of sorts where you get fired up about startups and startup investing and entrepreneurship and leadership. And you can now pass that on, that newfound culture, that cultural evolution in entrepreneurship and you can pass it on to those around you and pass it on to your children. Because, you know, a lot of you guys are pretty young, but eventually, you know, you're going to settle down and you're going to have kids and have a family. And it's this, at this point now, we need to start planting seeds in your head so that you can plant the seeds in your kids' heads and the next generation. So if you will take a look at the need for curriculum change and the need to change, you know, certain aspects of the education system in St. Lucia, this is not something where you're going to see the fruits over five years. You're going to see the fruits bearing in the next generation. So that's the way we have to look at entrepreneurship in St. Lucia right now. I saw a lot of wonderful ideas. Everybody who presented had great ideas. You know, some of them you have to kind of go back to the drawing board a bit because they may have been a little too ambitious, but there are some nuggets in there that can really, really work well. So I'd like to thank everybody who gave their pitches. It was fun. It was very informative. Best of luck to all the participants. And again, I'd like to thank the BOOST team for putting on, you know, the first of many national idea pitch competitions. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Boodoo, for your remarks. We're moving straight ahead into our next item on the agenda. Mr. Varee Said of Fincasa Capital is our next speaker and his presence today is very special in many ways. BOOST introduced an entrepreneurship seed capital fund to provide startups and new ventures the opportunity to receive seed capital towards financing its first steps, such as market research and implementation, first time utility setups and product or service development or production. Fincasa Capital is one of the first donors to the fund and today's winners will be receiving some of their prizes through the fund. Mr. Said, welcome and thank you for joining us via Zoom. Hello. Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead. Yeah. I want to congratulate to the team BOOST for taking out such an amazing step in order to build the entrepreneur and startups of St. Lucia. I'm honored to be participating at the national competition here today. We are based in Dubai. We are venture capital based in Dubai. We invest in various seeds, right from seed capital from 100,000 to up to the 50 million dollars what we have made the last investment last year. And I would like to support with all the startups that have participated today and would like to encourage to see to develop themselves from this space to go globally whereby we play an important part to accelerate and give market access to the winners and the startups from BOOST to Dubai and from Dubai take those startups globally. So we would like to work very cooperatively with the coming time and I would like to give a lot of support in terms of funding, in terms of market access, in terms of acceleration, bringing out of connects. So this is what we're looking to achieve together with the team BOOST and looking forward for a more collaboration. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Said. And thank you for joining us. Hello. Hi. Can you hear me? Thank you, Mr. Said. And thank you for joining us all the way from Dubai. We are thankful for your team and the dedication from you and FinCASA Capital. Now I will invite Sajikore to share a few words briefly as one of the main sponsors of the NIPC. Sajikore is also the first donor to the entrepreneurship seed capital fund from BOOST. Welcome, Mr. Shill and Leo. He is Sajikore's head of sales. He is also joining us on Zoom. It is said that the best way to predict the future is to create and I think this BOOST national idea page competition is doing just that, allowing solution young entrepreneurs an opportunity to create a favorable future. Sajikore, our vision is to improve the lives of people in our communities. And we think that by partnering with the best solution, that's exactly what we do, allowing entrepreneurs to contribute to their own values and to the values of the solution. Thank you very much. So I want to encourage all of the participants to keep pushing, to keep creating the future, their desired future. I want to again thank Investigation for this lovely initiative and to let us all know that Sajikore remains committed to participating in BOOST and, of course, the resolution of this next initiative, which I know is going to become clearly in the upcoming months to brighten the lives of solutions and all the participants and all the people that come in contact with you. So again, Sajikore is indeed honored to be part of this project and we look forward to continuing partnership with you guys. Good luck guys. Thank you Mr. Leo and to the team at Sajikore who expressed their commitment to this project from day one. Now I will welcome Mr. Leslie Collamo who's thankfully here with us today. He is the Principal Consultant of Advanced Intellectual Methods and he will deliver a few brief remarks about his company's sponsorship to the NIPC. Morning everyone. I wasn't sure that I'd be making any remarks but grateful for the opportunity. I think I'd like to thank off the Investor Musha team, BOOST, all the supporting partners for this initiative. I think that entrepreneurship is something that any growing small island development state is a nucleus of how we develop and how we go forward and for us as a small company ourselves, it's important for us to give back and to lead the new generation of entrepreneurs. So our input in terms of judging, mentorship and also business support was important here. So at Advanced Intellectual Methods, we feel that for these young entrepreneurs to go forward, we needed to help tangibly. So we will be giving digital support in terms of digital marketing services, branding advocacy, brand development, e-commerce services, web development. So again, hats off to everyone. Good luck and thank you for the opportunity. Thank you Mr. Collamo. We've had a few speakers this morning but I'm not sure how much attention any of them got from our finalists because they went for an intensive and rigorous six-week business development program. They probably did not sleep on Sunday night trying to prepare for the pitch on Monday and I'm sure they haven't gotten a wink during a suspenseful sorry day yesterday. There has been a whole lot of speeches this morning but just please allow me to talk a little bit more as I tell you what the prizes are. So the first place winner will be getting $10,000 worth of cash and prizes. That includes $6,000 worth of cash from the Entrepreneurship Seed Capital Fund, $800 worth of marketing and communication services, one tablet worth $600, an email blast campaign worth $650, a Google ad revenue campaign worth $450, fast-track access to the finals of the Entrepreneurship World Cup, St Lucia Leg, and a feature in Dazzle Magazine as the first place winner worth about $1,500. Our second place winner will be receiving $4,000 worth of cash and prizes. This includes $2,500 worth of cash from the Fund, $750 worth of marketing and communication services, about $250 worth of Google ad revenue campaign, fast-track access to the finals of the EWC, that's the Entrepreneurship World Cup, St Lucia Leg, and a feature in Dazzle Magazine as the second place winner worth about $500. Our third place winner will be receiving $2,500 worth of cash and prizes. This includes $1,500 worth of cash from the Entrepreneurship Seed Capital Fund, about $400 worth of marketing and communication services, $100 worth in the Google ads revenue campaign, fast-track access to the EWC, and a feature in Dazzle Magazine worth about $500. So, without further ado, it's time to find out who the third place winner is. This morning I told you all how much Dinesh has done for Booster, he got me little envelopes. So, I will be opening the third place envelope right now. So, our third place winner is, is everybody ready? Are the finalists ready? No. It is Bioghanics, who is represented by Kyle Nicholas this morning. The prize will be presented by Mr. Dinesh Daswani. Bioghanics received 332 points from the judges with only a 2.5 gap between the second place winner, from the second place winner. Okay, I said there was a lot of talking this morning, but I didn't promise that it would end now. Before we announce the second place winner, I will be calling on Mr. Dave Headley, who will be announcing a special partnership that Investor Nusha and Boost has been developing with the UNDP. So, now I invite Mr. Dave Headley to the podium. Pleasant good morning. I would like to adopt their protocol already established. Today we have reached another milestone. However, let me give you a quick background as to how we got here. Once Boost launched, we engaged several stakeholders on various initiatives on how to further improve and enhance the business environment for existing and upcoming entrepreneurs in St. Nusha. Investing Nusha and Boost by Extension were fortunate to have had previous talks with the UNDP representative, Mr. Miguel Trim, who is the deputy team leader for Kari CQ, on developing an interactive digital map of St. Nusha's entrepreneurship ecosystem. The first of this partnership was the E-Futures, a set of practical guides to help businesses retool and discover new ways to reach customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. These seven practical guides were made available to over 450 persons registered to the Boost platform as well as persons visiting the St. Nusha Boost website. This was followed by the interactive digital map of St. Nusha's entrepreneurship ecosystem exercise. Once the concept was presented to the UNDP team, they endorsed it and funded the entire exercise. The late consultant, Mr. Peter Lord, undertook the initial research on identifying the key agencies and organizations in the business environment that would facilitate entrepreneurs through the developmental journey. The information was then gathered and then was passed on to the second consultant, Mr. Jade Hutchinson from MEC to transform that data into a digital platform to basically help to create what we call St. Nusha Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Directory. This is a resource tool for startups and existing entrepreneurs to identify the key agencies and companies they can reach out to for business support based on the developmental stages they are at in the entrepreneurship journey. As a result of undertaking this exercise, we have seen additional opportunities to develop this digital tool to further enhance the business ecosystem in St. Nusha, something we intend to do with engaging other key stakeholders and partners. Investing in St. Nusha and by extension the government of St. Nusha has recognized the impact of micro small and medium enterprises. Sorry about that. Investing in St. Nusha and by extension the government of St. Nusha has recognized the impact of micro small and medium enterprises have on a small economy like St. Nusha and with initiatives like this we strongly believe in the ongoing development of the business environment to encourage a contagious entrepreneurship and innovative culture in St. Nusha. I know I have said it many times before but a big thank you goes out to the entire UNDP, the entire UNDP Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean team with specific recognition for of Mr. Miguel Trim who is the deputy team leader of Cary Secure, Mr. Miguel Graru, Eastern Caribbean support officer and of course a special thanks to Ms. Jordana Tennebaum who is the head of solutions mapping at UNDP for efforts in enlightening the general public on the e-future guides. With this being said I would now like to invite Mr. Miguel Trim to the podium to give a few brief remarks. Thank you Dave. I'd like to adopt the established protocol and wish everyone here today and listening online a pleasant good morning. First of all congratulations to all the winners of the pitch competition and the participants. I think in listening to the videos earlier we've seen some some great ideas presented and and soon to be awarded and I'm really excited to see how these businesses come to life. Thank you for having me here this morning to highlight some of the work of UNDP Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean and the work we're doing more specifically to support MSMEs in retooling and recovering in the midst of this global pandemic. The United Nations Development Program partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life of everyone. UNDP Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean aims to create an enabling environment for sustainable development to help empower lives and build resilient nations supporting countries in the region in meeting regional commitments and internationally agreed goals including the sustainable development goals. As we navigate this unprecedented global health crisis, one that is spreading human suffering, infecting the global economy and appending people's lives, we appreciate the vital role that micro small and medium enterprises, MSMEs and entrepreneurs play in nations overall production networks that they are indeed core to the economic growth of developing countries such as St. Lucia and critical to efforts to maintain lives and livelihoods. In recognition of this UNDP Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean is focusing on supporting economic transformation and recovery for MSMEs through knowledge transfer and we are happy to partner with Boost in helping small business owners to access this very useful information in two ways. Firstly, the St. Lucia Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem platform is a resource tool for startups and existing entrepreneurs to identify the agencies and companies they can reach out to for business support based on the developmental stages they are at in their journey. This platform is geared towards MSMEs and entrepreneurs to chart their way through this sometimes confusing environment and streamline their search for information and resources. Since some of the innovative ideas from the finalists, I'm sorry, seeing some of the innovative ideas from the finalists, we do hope that this ecosystem platform can be helpful to some of them in taking their ideas to the next level. In our discussions, we've also highlighted the potential for scaling up the platform, collaborating with other business support agencies and NGOs, so we're really optimistic about the future. Secondly, the eFuture Digital Guides which are also available on the Boost platform. We've all recognized that COVID-19 has accelerated the transition towards the digital economy, led companies to use digital solutions and to digitize some aspects of their operations to protect their businesses, employees, and customers and clients. Whether it's small businesses and retailers turning to WhatsApp, social media, or other messaging services to reach their customers or including online ordering and delivery options in the operations, or following more strict health and safety protocols in preparing and delivering their goods and service offerings, what we and UNDP have realized is that new modes of operation are needed to ensure that businesses could continue operating during the pandemic. However, this was really uncharted territory for the majority of MSMEs in the Eastern Caribbean. In response to this, we have created the UNDP eFuture Guides, a set of seven easy-to-follow guides accompanied by videos that offer strategic steps to help businesses retool and discover new ways to reach customers. The guides include a range of topics from finances to marketing and promotion, to safety and security, and environmental practices. They are also accompanied by a Caribbean Digital Skills eLearning Course, the key, your digital business toolkit, which supports retraining for income generation and provides a free introduction to over 12 no or low-cost software tools to build MSME capacity for digital businesses. Also, as we're on the topic of opportunities, for those interested, please stay tuned to the UNDP Barbados Twitter page. The handle is at UNDP Barbados for information on the Future Tourism Program. Futurism is an upcoming project that aims to technically and financially support MSMEs that are directly or indirectly linked to the tourism sector or have been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. An open call for MSMEs working within the tourism sector to register in an MSME database will go out in the next few days for this program. So tune into the Twitter space for more details. Knowledge is power, and that's one constant that has not changed even in the pandemic. As UNDP continues to help empower lives and build resilient nations, we want to encourage MSMEs and entrepreneurs in St. Lucia to take advantage of all these excellent resources and opportunities that offer insights to improve your businesses and connect with the entrepreneurship ecosystem in St. Lucia and beyond. I'd also like to encourage you to share them with others interested in entrepreneurship and the business space as more people involved and engaged in business activities translates into economic growth and entrepreneurship culture and more of the innovative mindset we need to recover, build back better, and prepare ourselves for the post-pandemic global realities. Thank you once again to Boost, Dinesh Dave, and the team at ISL for your collaboration and partnership, and we look forward to great things from the Boost Accelerator, the Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Platform, and more of what we're seeing today with these excellent ideas for the MSME space. Thank you. So right now we're just going to do a quick demo of the Digital Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Directory. The URL is doingbusinessslu.com so we encourage persons to go online and check it out. Just remember with all the additional resources, there are further opportunities to add some additional functionalities but for short persons who are starting off or who really don't know where to go for information, you could, there are some search features you can use with regard to whether it be safety. Once you've filtered that down through, it should populate and give you some relevant information. Another key resource, therefore, so in this instance you would populate in terms of insurance and of course one of our key partners there could provide all the relevant information you need. Another key resource is the Youth Equity Fund. A lot of persons with no challenges with the startups and young entrepreneurs is funding and of course we have the SLDB who is one of our strategic partners as well as the initiative. There are many other resources on there so we encourage persons listening, our young startups, or potential entrepreneurs to take advantage of this additional resource and also to stay tuned to follow both social media sites and information as we add additional resources to this platform. Thank you, Dave and Mr. Trim. I hope the finalists forgive me for prolonging the results a bit longer but this platform doingbusinessslu is meant for you as well as all the entrepreneurs who are watching us right now and anybody who needs access to information such as what's available in the directory. Now I will invite Mr. Rodrick Cherry as well as Mr. Dinesh Daswani to present our finalists with their certificates of participation in the National Idea Pitch Competition. So I'd like to call on Ed Tellegen first to receive their certificate of participation from. Next we have real 3D printing and then bioganics, tropical kayaking adventures, tropical kayak adventures sorry. Check in Caribbean City and 360. Okay so our guests were really quiet during this presentation so I hope that I hope that when I'm about to announce the second place winner you're not as quiet. A reminder that the second place winner is receiving four thousand dollars worth of cash and prizes so I have my little envelope again thanks Dinesh. Our second place winner is 360. She um 360 is represented by Kisya Peter today and she scored 334.5 points from the judges. So now please allow me to invite Permanent Secretary Miss Sophia Henry on behalf of the Minister for Commerce to present the first place check to the first place winner. Now finally for a prize worth ten thousand dollars of funding and assistance the finalist that the judges found the most innovative and creative and sustainable the business idea which they think will change this country. We're going to announce the first place winner but let me open my envelope. Anybody want to do a drum roll? We have the yes thank you thank you. The first place winner is real 3D printing. Real 3D printing is represented by Coyote sorry James. He is the owner and managing director of Real 3D printing. Coyote presented alongside his production assistant Chris Tarnill who I think is also here today if I'm not mistaken. Okay thank you everyone who is here with us today and on behalf of Boost Investing Lucia all the other sponsors congratulations to our top three finalists. I just want to note that nobody leaves here a loser today because our seven finalists did experience a very informative and like I said a rigorous business development program where they left with a lot of lessons and connections. They are connected to mentors and people who are in the business arena to assist them in having their business be a full-fledged success. Okay one of the prizes for the three winners is access to the entrepreneurship world cup. I think they got fast-tracked registration. We have Michelle Samuel here with us today via Zoom. She will be presenting giving us a few words about what the competition is about and how the three winners will move on to this next step. Yes we can. Okay hello good morning to everybody and I just want to say a very big congratulations to everybody who participated in the national idea pitch competition. As Miss McDowell said everybody here is a winner because you are participating in a competition to take your business your idea to the next level. Some of you have already been impacting the community as I have heard in the the national finals so congratulations to all of you and through the top five persons you are all getting fast-tracked access to the entrepreneurship world cup St. Lucia competition as was announced a few minutes ago. So the entrepreneurship world cup competition is the biggest pitch competition in the world. It is hosted globally by the Global Entrepreneurship Network out of Washington DC in collaboration with the MISC Global Forum from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and the TGLF. So the three organizations together created this competition which is now in its third year and last year we saw Mr. Gillian Avril emerging as winner of that competition and now we are looking at the possibility of wonderful ideas such as what I saw here to enter this competition and to represent St. Lucia on a global stage. So for the first two persons the very first and second place winners you will be getting fast-tracked access to entrepreneurship world cups in Lucia that means you go straight to pitching at the finals so you will bypass all our processes and then pitch along with our other selectees to pitch at the national finals and the third and fourth place winner and fifth place winner third fourth and fifth place winners you will get fast-tracked access to the preliminary competition so I just want to say congratulations to you EWC takes place in the month of July that is the fifth to the ninth of July it's a five-day summit and I'm really excited to see how you fare against all of the other competitors in this particular competition. I just want to say that this is an opportunity to take your idea and take your business to the next stage. The national idea competition brought it out and now you have to bring your A game at EWC SLU and I just want to say thank you again to invest St. Lucia and Boost by extension for allowing us to partner with them and to create this incentive for the participants congratulations to all of you you all were amazing and I cannot wait to see you all on this global stage this coming July but you must all apply even those persons who did not place in the top three I urge you all to apply to the EWC and you never know what you did not receive here you may receive um at EWC you will get access to mentorship you'll get access to food and resources from our global partners and what are you competing for on the global stage over a million dollars U.S. youth of cash and prizes that is what awaits you at EWC and I just want to say congratulations once again and looking forward to seeing more of you so I am the country director for entrepreneurship with club St Lucia and also the founder and president of Santerra proud partner of the NIPC thank you again thank you Michelle so this presentation was not just for our finalists we hope that all the entrepreneurs watching via zoom um by Facebook on NTN also take note of this competition which is coming up in July before we leave let me just mention our task force members for boost invest St Lucia of course export St Lucia the Small Business Development Center the St Lucia Development Bank the St Lucia Manufacturers Association the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council the St Lucia Coalition of Service Industries and our other partners include Lisa Arthur Lewis Community College the St Lucia Bureau of Standards the Southern Business Association the St Lucia National Youth Council and the Performance Management and Delivery Unit and now of course UNDP thank you everyone for watching thank you everyone who is here with us congratulations once again to our winners and we hope to see you in the next round of the National Idea Pitch Competition thank you