The Young Americas Business Trust and the Interamerican Institute for cooperation on Agriculture, join efforts to strengthen their programs

 The Young Americas Business Trust (YABT)

and the Interamerican Institute for Cooperation

on Agriculture (IICA), are getting together to strengthen the programs

that they have been developing,

cooperation that will start during this year 2006.

They share common objectives and they will support each other in programs

and activities to combat fight poverty in the Americas.

One of the objectives of the YABT is to create employment opportunities among the young people and trough the entrepreneurship, enterprises creation, formal and informal training, technology application and the expansion of existing enterprises operated by young adults.

According to the above mentioned, the IICA support the training programs for entrepreneurs and technical personnel of publics and private institutions in order to increase the productivity and competitiveness of agriculture and contribute to food security.

In this case, the Business Labs Program will be directed to young people with a focus in the agricultural area in order to help them start their own business in the field.

Specifically, YABT and IICA will work in Uruguay with a group of youth, in Honduras they will support a group of young people supporting the export of ethnic products, and in Haiti they will establish the program targeting young people who work in the Rural Agricultural sector as well as in Dominica, a country in need of an alliance for the Sustainable Agricultural Development according to a study made in order to establish the Caribbean Agricultural Forum for Youth (CAFY).

In order to define this initiative, the YABT team met with Carlos Echeverria, Manager of Strategic Alliances of IICA, to discuss the different possibilities to work together; during this meeting they came up with multiples ideas that can be taken to action with the mutual support.

As a first step, to benefit the low-income sector, the information will transferred to local representatives and a followed up. This information will also be useful as a link to the development of future projects, “It is essential to transfer the experiences to other countries with the support of the International Organizations, the Private Sector, Local Entities and others”, stated Carlos Echeverria.

According to Mr. Roy Thomasson, CEO of YABT, “young people from the agricultural sector will benefited from this idea, which was produced through the mutual collboration of IICA and YABT. The expectations are positive, directing this activities at the development of the agricultural sector. We hope will this create employment for young people in agribusiness, biotechnology, and in agriculture in general”.

YABT-Communications

Vanessa Cappuccio