Young Entrepreneurs feted

The Most Outstanding Young Entrepreneur of the year 2005 (YESL) Award was bagged by the President of Skiff Company, Ferguson High School Ratnapura Omalika Ravindrani Jayatilake at the seventh Annual Young Entrepreneur National Award Ceremony held at the BMICH on Monday.

The Runner-up Girl and Boy awards went to Hasanji Ellawela of Musaeus College, and Roshan Rajaratnam of St. Joseph's College Colombo.

Forty one best performers and their Runners Up were also recognised together with 24 teachers and principals at the event.

The young entrepreneurs were given the opportunity to explain their positive and negative experiences when running their companies.

The President of one company said that they were unable to open up a current account in a bank as the bank refused to open an account for the simple reason that they could not produce an embossed seal due to lack of funds.

President YESL Patrick Amarasinghe said that the country has four and half million children in the school system and all of them are looking for a future which is the biggest challenge.

The challenge is more for the private sector as the Government could provide under one million jobs compared to 6 million jobs provided by the private sector. In conclusion he said, "Children are the biggest human resource we have in the country and unless we provide opportunities for them, I feel that we are sitting on a human volcano and we should not allow that volcano to erupt."

Director Economics Growth Division USAID Richard Edward was the chief guest.

YESL is the member franchise holder of Junior Achievement Worldwide (JAW) introduced to Sri Lanka in 1998 which is a non profit organisation financed by businesses, and individuals to educate and inspire children from primary school through high school to value free enterprise, self dependant to be job creators and not be job seekers.

RK