Local authorities here are encouraging the youth to go into business and avail of the entrepreneurial training and seed capital poured in for the Negosyo Center.

At the sidelines of the opening of the “Linggo ng Kabataan” (Youth Week) and the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) Week celebration on Monday, La Trinidad Mayor Romeo Salda said they are happy that the local youth development office, which manages the Negosyo Center (Business Center), has introduced entrepreneurial programs for the youth.

Salda said the municipal government has provided a PHP500,000 seed funding for the center, which can be accessed by the youth.

“We want them to learn to manage even just a small business and learn from it while they are studying (and) until they finish their courses, and by then they already have an established business,” he said.

Salda said the Negosyo Center can also help in coming up with proposals that require bigger funding.

He said they plan to provide MSMEs a space where they can display their products or serve as a one-stop-shop once construction of the livelihood building is done.

Orlando Pacya, local youth development program officer and La Trinidad Negosyo Center in charge, in a separate interview, said “We encourage the youth to avail of the benefits of being trained to develop their business mindedness and also make feasibility (study) for a project proposal to be able to get funds from the local government unit or the different agencies.”

“The business that will get funding will be monitored for two years. During the assessment, the LGU (local government unit) might give the funding requirement as a grant once the business was found to have been doing well,” he said.

Pacya said they are closely collaborating with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) for the MSME owners’ training.

La Trinidad Councilor Frederick Guzman, Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) chairman of Barangay Tawang and the SK Federation president of this capital town, in an interview, said “In our barangay, we have allotted PHP200,000 under the local youth development fund, and we are using that to help finance young entrepreneurs.”

He said that from the messages during the program, he and other members of the SK got ideas about funding training for youth entrepreneurship, which will become part of the SK Federation activities on top of the sports and skills development. (PNA)