The Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) is providing grants of up to $100,000 to operators of micro enterprises in targeted communities under its Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP II).

Eligible individuals must be between 18 and 30 years old and from the communities of Salt Spring, Anchovy, Norwood, and Mount Salem in St James; Treadlight in Clarendon; and August Town, Greenwich Town and Denham Town in Kingston and St Andrew.

Managing Director, JSIF, Omar Sweeney, told JIS News that the grants are being provided through cycle three of the Enterprise Youth Development Grant initiative, which is funded to the tune of $15 million.

“These are not cash grants but based on needs and what persons would point out as their difficulty. They may receive equipment, training in accounting and budgeting, managing the business, marketing [and] customer service,” explained Sweeney.

He said that successful applicants can also receive support to “register themselves as a company”.

He is encouraging persons to apply, especially “if you have a business… and you think that you need an investment. Sometimes you just need a refrigerator, hairdryer, a vacuum or a power washer machine to allow your business to manoeuvre”, noting that they can also receive resources to make their business pivot.

Sweeny told JIS News that if the support being provided will enable the business operator to employ an additional person, then that is a “big bonus, in terms of being able to receive the grant”.

The deadline to apply for the grant is Friday, July 8.

Additional details, including application requirements and forms, are available on the JSIF's website at www.jsif.org.

The City of Kingston, particularly the downtown area, is gradually coming alive again as various infrastructural developments continue to unfold.

One of the latest fixtures to be unveiled is the new aesthetically appealing boardwalk, which now greets visitors to Port Royal Street along the segment spanning the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade building to the Rae Town fishing beach.

The 4.7-metre-wide boardwalk where persons can comfortably engage in commercial and recreational activities, was created under the just completed $1.3-billion Port Royal Street Coastal Revetment Project, implemented by the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) to safeguard the corridor from continued erosion and the effects of storm surges.