Raisa Charles

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A call has been made for local Female entrepreneurs to sign up for a chance to win cash prizes.

The Pitch Your Business Competition is a collaboration between the Directorate of Gender Affairs and the British High Commission.

Raisa Charles- Program Officer within the DoGA sought to shed further light on the event.

“So, the Pitch Your Business competition is part of our Female Leaders Program and that’s where the Directorate really aims to seek out young women who are emerging as leaders in business and in the political arena. This year we are focusing a lot on business and entrepreneurship.

​“There is a link on our Facebook page that people can go on to apply. It is open to women with small businesses and start-ups, and we are asking them to submit a 60-second video or write a short essay of about 300 words explaining what their business is, what their original motivation for starting said business was, and what goals they would have for that business. All of the applicants will be screened, and top candidates will be selected from that. Those candidates will then go on to pitch their businesses live to a panel of judges and compete for a cash prize,” Charles explained on state media earlier this week.

The live competition with the six finalists will take place on International Women’s Day on March 8.

Kadeem Joseph, the Political and Project Officer at the British High Commission explained just how this partnership came to be.

“We always have these smaller projects that come up where we fund young developing talent in Antigua and Barbuda to get to the next level. We had the DoGA pitch this idea to us, and this is also part of a bigger project where we had a link and lime last week. This is now the second phase, and we are very happy to support them.

“We saw the proposal and we thought it was worth supporting and here we are,” Joseph said.

The deadline to apply is February 23. Successful applicants will be notified by February 29 and the final competition on March 8.