Justice & Equitable Development Trust (JEDTrust) Jamaica is a civil society organization operating in Jamaica since 2010. In its Economic Inclusion Portfolio is a groundbreaking project dubbed “Inclusive Business Growth Project” that provides sustainable and high-impact entrepreneurship/business creation opportunities to post-secondary students, youth (unattached and unemployed), women and creatives (performing artists, animators, graphic designers, couturiers, and tailors).
JEDTrust mission: Stimulating successful business creation across all sections of society is an important requirement for achieving smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth and responding to economic and social challenges in Jamaica. Entrepreneurship can respond to high rates of unemployment and low levels of labor market participation, which are often concentrated in particular sections of society by enabling people to create their own jobs and jobs for others. It is fundamental to the emergence of a more entrepreneurial economy in which new firms offer new solutions to social, economic, and environmental challenges. However, many people face barriers to entrepreneurship. They include access to finance, lack of appropriate skills, and lack of business networks. These obstacles are often more important for people from groups that are disadvantaged and under-represented in entrepreneurship, who often face additional barriers related to attitudes, motivations, and welfare systems that discriminate against entrepreneurship. Both business development policies and active labor market policies have a role to play in helping overcome these problems. Appropriate actions can be taken at national, regional, and local levels and targeted at key groups such as students, youth, women, LGBTQ persons, economically disadvantaged persons, creatives, seniors, the unemployed, involuntary returned migrants, and people with disabilities.
