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• Guyana’s Leonard dreams of growth beyond roadside bakery

Guyana’s Leonard dreams of growth beyond roadside bakery

25 April 2007

For many disadvantaged young people, the Commonwealth Youth Credit Initiative (CYCI) is a lifeline out of unemployment and poverty

Guyanese Paul Leonard was first taught to bake by his step grandmother, a hawker from whom he also discovered his passion for entrepreneurship.

A former cane-cutter and part-time grocer, 37-year-old Mr Leonard started his association with the CYCI by making frozen fruit lollies. But his business began to suffer when the villages he served were electrified for the first time and the original demand for his wares declined. He then decided to switch to baking, with the help of his CYCI training and two loans.

Mr Leonard supplies his village, Manchester, and surrounding communities with his special brand of `home-made’ bread, cakes, and pastries, significantly reducing the market originally held by the more established bakeries and penetrating the homes of even those villagers who had traditionally done their own baking.

From a pink roadside stand, Mr Leonard sells the goods he bakes in pans and ovens he has created from wood and zinc. His bakery, a stone’s throw away from the stand, is under his rented home.

“I am very thankful to the CYCI because they taught me a lot about keeping records, knowing what I am producing, and about the wholesale business,” Mr Leonard said.

On a relatively good day, he can sell about 70 loaves of bread, as well as burgers -- beef, fish and chicken -- and cakes and pastries.

He hopes eventually to buy his own home and establish a small shop and snack bar downstairs. “Those are the kinds of things I am working on from now; that’s how far I’m thinking.”

Through the Youth Enterprise and Sustainable Livelihoods programme, the CYCI scheme provides training, mentoring and credit support to enable young People to start their own businesses. It was successfully piloted in 1996 in Gujarat, India, and by the end of its three-year cycle, over 2,500 young men and women had received financial and enterprise management training as well as access to small loans.

Now the initiative is operating in four Commonwealth regions under the auspices of the Commonwealth Youth Programme centres in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the South Pacific, in collaboration with local agencies.