Responding to an economy burdened by unemployment and biases against Sabbath-keepers, the Seventh-day Adventist Church is launching a new initiative to create small businesses and jobs for young people.

“We have an unemployment rate as high as 35 percent, and if you add the Sabbath to that, it becomes a big problem,” says Pastor Clive Dottin, who is shepherding the new venture, called the Caribbean Adventist Small Business Association, or CASBA.

The group’s objectives include development of “Bargain Cities,” or community markets, across the Caribbean, training in management and marketing for youth who wish to start small businesses, and providing an import-export network to enable them to market their products in 25 Caribbean territories.

CASBA aims to start 60 small businesses within two years. In its first week, 11 new small businesses were started—five in Trinidad and Tobago and six in Barbados. There are two Bargain Cities now operating, and five more will be established.

Pastor Dottin says the impetus for the CASBA effort comes from trying to do more for young adults than just offering a handout.

“We have got to be able to motivate the young people to discover their talents and build enterprises based on their talents, otherwise the church will become a welfare agency just dishing out money,” he declares.

“After Pentecost, there was a networking experience ... that facilitated the needs of people being met,” Dottin says, recalling the example of the early Christian church. “I believe if we say we have to minister to the needs of young people, it must not be a pulpit pronouncement. We have youth in the world and the church who are getting involved in all sorts of devious practices in order to make a living.”

Dottin says that Bargain Cities will open soon in Guyana, St. Lucia, Antigua, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, with many in business for the crucial pre-Christmas shopping season of late November and early December. After that, a regional directory of CASBA members will be published, and plans are underway for a training seminar that will bring expertise to the young entrepreneurs.

“In April of next year, around Easter time, we will sponsor a workshop in small business management and marketing, to be held in Trinidad,” Dottin says. “All small business operators will be invited. We already have established businessmen enlisted to direct this seminar, and we will feature training in marketing, management, introductory accounting. And we will run a Bargain City during the seminar as a hands-on learning experience.”

Although in its early stages, Dottin says the CASBA project has evoked a positive response in the young people of the church.

“If you see the enthusiasm of people who had no hope in Trinidad here, there’s a hope that I had never seen before. There’s an electrifying current, an optimisim. The church must inject hope, through different means,” he says.