PASHA Bank and Junior Achievement Support Youth Enterprise Development

PASHA Bank OJSC and Junior Achievement Azerbaijan launched a new initiative to support youth SME development in Baku and Quba. The program called, the Sustainable Enterprise Development Program, will establish youth-led SMEs in Azerbaijan and enhance their efficiency through capacity-building activities and enabling business environment.

In 2012, the program will benefit 60 participants aged 18-27, who are involved or plan to be involved in small and medium entrepreneurship. The program presentations will be held in universities, colleges, community centers and youth organizations of Baku and Quba. The participants will be selected through an open application process that will factor in the applicants' enterprise experience, innovative business idea, and projected personal action plan upon the program graduation. Junior Achievement Azerbaijan will assist the selected participants to form enterprises and support them through appropriate business training, consultancy, access to finance, and exhibition opportunities. Additionally, the program will conduct monthly public business awareness campaigns to raise the communities' financial literacy.

As a result, the new initiative will promote enterprise development, enhance the participants' access to finance opportunities, and foster enabling environment for the enterprises. The project will be concluded by the networking event, where the project beneficiaries will exhibit their businesses.

"PASHA Bank" OJSC which is part of "PASHA" group of companies was organized in June 2007 and is operating under the license dated 28 November 2007 No 250 issued by the Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Bank was founded to deliver world class banking services to the rapidly developing corporate and private sectors in Azerbaijan. The Bank is committed to establishing and developing long term, supportive relationships with its growing customer base and delivering banking services at the highest international levels of transparency and service built on three core values of Quality, Integrity and Profitability. In terms of the volume of paid-in capital (136.8 million AZN) the Bank is the second largest in the domestic market.

Junior Achievement Azerbaijan (JAA) is the local representative of Junior Achievement (JA) Worldwide, the world's largest not-for-profit organization in business education. Junior Achievement mission is to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy. Since its founding in 1919, JA has contributed to the business and economics education of young people throughout the world. JA now operates through local representatives in 116 countries worldwide. In Azerbaijan Junior Achievement started in 1998 and since then JA Azerbaijan trained thousands of students and more than 300 teachers from 260 schools in 26 regions through the funding from the public and private donors.