Microfranchises in Jamaica

Ya man. During the month of October I spent 2 weeks in Jamaica as an associate consultant for Fairbourne Consulting. Check out the video that the film company Good Line put together about the project. I'm only in there a few times, but just know that all this footage was taken the 2nd week we were there, in the areas where we were working.



The trip was a great experience, and I'm really hoping for the success of the project we started there. This trip was the first of many. We were doing the initial market analysis for setting up microfranchises run by youth in the inner-city neighborhoods of Kingston. We worked with the Jamaican government's program called Youth Upliftment Through Employment (YUTE).

We held focus groups in different communities, and walked the streets talking to shop owners and consumers.


We held nightly "brainloads" to share our individual knowledge from the day's work and map it on our gigantic wall of post-its. This is the boss, Jason Fairbourne:


We had to decide what products or services could best be run as a small business by Jamaican youth, and making the right choice depended on a few different things:
(1) who were our potential business partners?,
(2) how fast could we set up and do trainings?,
(3) what products or services are lacking in these neighborhoods?,
(4) what business would youth be excited to do?,
(5) what are consumers asking for?, and
(6) what would work long-term and could scale to all of Jamaica?

Those are just a few examples I can think of at the moment. In the end we reported back with 3 real potential businesses, and 2 fall-back business plans. It was great getting to know the team I worked with, and it was especially great getting to know Jamaicans. As I've come to understand the kind of lives Jamaicans live in the neighborhoods we visited, I really want this project to be a solution for their youth. There isn't much hope for them, and I hope this helps change that.



Business solutions for development, folks. It's pretty rad.

Here are some selected pics of the trip!

:)