MANDEVILLE, Manchester — Sixteen young men from at-risk communities in Manchester have benefited from entrepreneurship training and support through the philanthropic efforts of Young Women/Men of Purpose (YWOP/YMOP), a non-profit organisation in this parish.

According to YWOP/YMOP founder and Executive Director Lanisia Rhoden, 10 of the beneficiaries received business grants totalling $550,000 as part of the REAP Entrepreneurship Project supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“We started this programme last year. We launched it officially last September for young men from three main communities — Greenvale, George’s Valley, and Richmond,” Rhoden explained at last Thursday’s award ceremony at Mandeville Community Fellowship and Worship Centre.

“They were awarded business grants to further develop their businesses and they would have been receiving mentoring from successful entrepreneurs,” she said.

“Especially since the pandemic, we have been operating right across the island. Our core function has been to provide career mentorship and guidance to young people across Jamaica, especially through our flagship mentoring programme for high school students where we literally help them to figure out their career path that they want to pursue,” said Rhoden.

Member of Parliament for Manchester North Western Mikael Phillips has pledged his support to YWOP/YMOP, which was founded in 2009 and has provided training to young people in his constituency.

Phillips, who credited his progress in life to entrepreneurship, commended YWOP/YMOP.

“….If it is one thing that they have shown me [it] is their commitment to the parish of Manchester and for our men and women, a non-profit organisation that has given itself to the upliftment of the people in the parish, so I want to commend the team for the work that you have been doing,” he said.

“When I left high school I was running a coffee farm in the Blue Mountains. Seventeen acres of coffee. I was helping my mother with her business, a restaurant, until I got the opportunity to start my own restaurant,” Phillips said.

He said he later closed down the restaurant and started an outdoor advertising business in 1991, which he sold in 2019.

“I did not go to university. Most people, when they ask me which university I go to, I say I am a ‘road scholar’ — university of life,” he said.

He reflected on his roots in the socio-economically depressed community of Standpipe, close to Papine in St Andrew.

“When we see individuals and they are successful, sometimes we feel as if they were born that way and luck just follows them and it is that they are successful. Many of them have come from humble beginnings,” he said.

“When people see mi, son of Peter Phillips, Member of Parliament, dem see mi drive a Land Cruiser and dem seh mi born this way…. Most people don’t even know who my mother is,” he added.