Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation (VISET)’s Economic Growth Department on Monday the 11th of September 2017, conducted the second brainstorming meeting with graduate vendors under the Graduate and Postgraduate Vendors Empowerment Initiative (GRAPEVINE). The initiative, which was launched in 2015, is meant to facilitate the access by poor and marginalized but talented young men and women in the vending community to profitable markets, skills and finance so that they can grow their businesses.
Further, the initiative is meant to demonstrate to the government, the private sector, corporate world, civil society and all the relevant stakeholders that vendors are micro-entrepreneurs or small businessmen / women, who, if granted adequate and appropriate support, can actually grow their businesses and become macro-entrepreneurs. The project is a result of VISET’s worrying realization that there is a massive increase in the number of graduate and post graduate vendors as a result of the failure by the economy to absorb these talented young men and women into the formal job market.
Speaking at the meeting VISET Executive Director, Samuel Wadzai urged all graduate vendors to participate stressing that the project is an attempt to harness the intellectual capital that has been built in the graduate and post graduate vendors through years of training in universities and colleges and invest it in business. He added that the initiative offers an alternative to formal employment which has become extinct in Zimbabwe and that GRAPIVINE will build the productive capacities of graduate and post graduate vendors by enhancing their capacities to trade profitably within a conducive operating environment.
Source: Vendors Initiative for Social and Economic Transformation (VISET)
