Top team

Coming out of the first segment of the Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme (YES), Refresh Beverages was awarded Most Outstanding business lab team.

In fact, had the group Bajan Tings not won ‘Most Innovative Product’, Refresh Beverages would have won all the awards. They also won Most Financially Beneficial and the Most Outstanding CEO. Their CEO was Shakeira Best.

The 22 participants, who were split into three teams, Refresh Beverages, Bajan Tings and Upcycle, were challenged to come up with a business product to market and sell in two weeks.

After three business lab presentations, the judges deliberated and awarded Most Outstanding to Refresh Beverages, whose product ‘Sip and Smile’, healthy drinks, won the judges and audience over.

Speaking with the media following the announcement and awards, Best, CEO of Refresh Barbados expressed that the feeling was incredibly overwhelming and accredited winning the award to the hard work that her team would have put into developing the product.

“When we were presenting we would have mentioned that we did not further analyse going into business because of the many challenges we faced but as one of my team members mentioned, we get enthusiastic about doing the brand and working together but facing the challenges kind of stopped us so I felt like ‘no’ at the beginning of the night,” she said.

“However, after hearing the judges’ responses and fine tuning the details and hearing the members considering the need to finetune the concept, I think that you will be hearing more about Refresh Beverages in the future.”

Selma Green, Manager of YES expressed that the next generation will be job creators and not job seekers; and as a result, she encouraged the participants to take what they learnt today and use it to expand their economic playing field.

She congratulated them for coming to the end of the basic training session and urged them to prepare for the upcoming advanced and intermediate training courses.

“You are a key part of the economic chain that cannot be broken, your business is not only about you, the contributions that you make starting today can expand the economic playing field for your enterprises to grow and for you to create sustainable livelihoods, not only for yourself but your families and communities,” she said.