Jamaican fellows from the 2022 installation of the Young Leaders of America Initiative (YLAI) in the United States of America believe Jamaica is missing out on opportunities for investments and business partnerships in Latin America due to a dearth of bilingual professionals.

While sharing their experiences in the YLAI programme, which included four weeks of professional placements in various states across the USA, the entrepreneurs admitted to gaining a greater appreciation for various cultures based on interactions with other fellows. In an interview with the Jamaica Observer on Thursday at the ROK Hotel in downtown Kingston, five of the YLAI fellows expressed an interest in learning a second language, preferably Spanish and/or French.

A product of the US State Department, YLAI is geared towards empowering entrepreneurs in Canada and over 40 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean by building their capacity to launch and advance business ventures that contribute to the social and economic development of their communities. Since its launch in 2015 the programme has engaged more than 1,000 fellows between ages 25 and 35 through the YLAI Entrepreneurial Leadership Curriculum and individualised professional placements.

To date, approximately 40 young Jamaicans have participated in YLAI, learning how to accelerate the success of their commercial and social ventures while developing action plans to implement on their return home and networking with entrepreneurs from other countries.

When asked what they wanted to bring back to Jamaica, having been exposed to a diversity of nationalities, Janielle Todd, founder and CEO of The A+ Generation, said she would advocate for more Jamaicans speaking Spanish.

“The opportunities are vast for partnership with the Latin American community. Even in the US they have recognised the Hispanics and they are ready to work; the collaboration is there. But we don’t know Spanish and so what’s happening is that we are cutting ourselves off from many opportunities. So, more than anything, if we really want to see our businesses grow, ensure that we learn Spanish,” she said.

Her YLAI colleagues were in agreement.

For cinematographer and photogphapher Dennis Fyffe, who is also the proprietor of Denni Visuals, learning Spanish should be mandatory.

“If they are required to learn English [to do business], why aren’t we required to learn Spanish? They have to know both English and Spanish, so we should know [to speak] Spanish as well,” he told Sunday Finance.

Though Jamaica is surrounded by majority Spanish-speaking countries, the exception being French-speaking Haiti to the island’s north-east, only a small number of the population claim fluency in either Spanish or French. This, despite both languages being taught at the secondary level.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has, on occasions, proposed making Spanish a secondary language in Jamaica, going as far back as 2016. In 2018, he would announce that foreign-direct investments from Kingdom of Spain was the highest in Jamaica’s tourism industry, amounting to $1.7 billion and contributing to the construction of 25 per cent of the hotel rooms on the island.

Educator and psychologist Keenen Senior, who leads God’s Investment for Today (GIFT) — a social enterprise focused on youth empowerment — argued that the “demand” for more Jamaicans to learn Spanish is not unreasonable. She highlighted her new-found appreciation for other cultures, having been placed in a diverse group that included her housemate from the Dominican Republic and other fellows from Peru and Brazil.

However, she lamented that while Latin Americans were forced to use the English language to communicate, given their location and the requirement to network, her fellow Caribbean participants instead complained about feeling excluded.

“I felt like there was a lot of complaints from the Caribbean group about feeling excluded when the truth is that there is some work that we need to do to be included. So while we feel that we were outnumbered, at the same [time], how were we prepared to enter those spaces? So that’s something that we definitely need to take into consideration,” she argued.

On that note, Jannel Alexander-Reid, founder and director of Institute of JAR, concurred. Her social enterprise focuses on helping women claim their economic and social indepence through training in events planning and décor, floral arrangement, make-up artistry, entrepreneurship, and cake baking.

Since returning from YLAI, she has incorporated the institution in a cross-cultural network of institutions catering to women.

“So, of course, for the Women’s Empowerment Network, we have people from Spanish-, from French- and, of course, here, from English-speaking countries. So we are collaborating, we have sessions where [have] exchange in our languages…” she shared,

“We have discussions about how we are going to connect with women in French-speaking countries because, of course, if you are about making a global impact it cannot be just English. You cannot be a global leader with just one language. You have to be connected,” Alexander-Reid continued.

With her business also targeting women who have been victims of domestic abuse, she has partnered with an organisation in Bolivia by adopting their model and using their best practices to introduce new training programmes to Institute of JAR.

She concluded that, since communicating is an essential part of travelling, it made sense for Jamaicans to learn another language.