The Supreme Ventures Foundation (SVF), the outreach arm of gaming group Supreme Ventures Limited, has shortlisted four entities for the top prize in the first staging of its Supreme Heroes programme.

The programme, which began in 2020, is focused on enhancing small community enterprises that not only generate economic activity in their area but assist the needy from their pockets.

Members of the public have until tomorrow September 17, to vote for their favourite on the Supreme Ventures Foundation website sv-foundation.com.

The programme kicked off with four heroes who were nominated by the public: Life Yard Restaurant and Eco-Tourism in Parade Gardens Kingston; New Horizons Christian Outreach in Spanish Town; Miss T’s Hardware run by Elma Thompson in Granville, St James and Miss Jenny’s Cornershop operated by Jennifer Brown in Norwood, St James.

Jamaica will have the chance to review their stories on the SVF social media pages on Instagram and Facebook and cast their vote on the SVF website for the most impactful Supreme Hero who will receive another grant from the foundation.

For the programme, each Hero developed a community project and received funding and support from the SVF to execute it.

They also received several weeks of capacity-building training from the Mona Entrepreneurial and Commercialization Centre (MECC) of the Mona School of Business Studies. They were provided with laptops to access virtual classes on taxation, copyright, marketing and other critical aspects of business operations

SVF director Heather Goldson says the foundation is seeking to choose the best-performing project from the inaugural cohort to further award them a grant to pump into their social enterprises.

“All of our heroes have performed phenomenally. As with the entire country they faced very challenging circumstances given the impact of COVID-19 and some even suffered personal setbacks; however, they managed to regroup and complete their projects on time, making the best of the training we provided through MECC.

“This is the final stage of the programme and we are excited to see the continuation of the great work being done with this larger grant that one special hero is going to be awarded. Their communities stand to benefit significantly, and the Supreme Ventures Foundation is very pleased to have been able to make this investment and support these community stalwarts,” said Goldson.

The awarding of the grant will be based on several factors including the impact of their selected project and the heroes’ incorporation of the lessons learned into their enterprises.