A jury comprising businessmen and experts has chosen twenty-three projects from those contestants participating in the “Eastern Entrepreneurs” program, qualifying them for the “Idea Competition”.

The “Eastern Entrepreneurs” project, commenced mid-April this year by the Syrian Young Entrepreneurs Association (“SYEA”) in cooperation with the Total Exploration and Production company, aims to encourage young Syrians in the three Eastern provinces of Deir Azour, Hasakah and Raqqah and help implement their small to medium-sized projects by providing the basic tools to transform their ideas into practical businesses in the economic market.

The “Eastern Entrepreneurs” program was initially able to attract fifty-four projects from the provinces of Deir Azour, Raqqah and Hasakah, including service, agricultural and livestock, industrial and commercial projects. SYEA’s branch in Deir Azour subsequently conducted a number of meetings to clarify the requisite conditions for progressing to the Eastern Entrepreneurs program, with thirty projects accepting.

Those contestants presenting their projects were then put through a number of training courses, teaching them how to write a business plan and providing them with the expertise and skills to survey the market and product pricing mechanisms, select administrative and financial personnel, and so forth.

Following this, twenty-three projects moved to the “Idea Competition” stage, based on the jury’s interview with participating teams and with each team giving a complete explanation of the idea behind its project and its strong points. The jury provided some guidance and observations for developing each contestant’s business plan.

Together with the “Idea Competition” stage, this is a series of specialist workshops for qualifying teams that aim to refine the contestant’s idea and develop it into an integrated business plan. Following this, the jury will select the projects competent to progress to the Entrepreneurs Competition.

In the “Entrepreneurs Competition” stage, each team will be appointed professional advisers with experience in the labour market in order to transfer their expertise to the contestants and help them to place the finishing touches on the business plan. Each team will subsequently present a final business plan to the jury, which in turn will choose the team that wins the prize of one million Syrian pounds on the basis of a number of criteria. These criteria include: “entrepreneurship and the ‘stand out’ nature of the project, the possibility of implementation, market size, competition, growth potential, harmony amongst team members and application of their skills for the project’s success, and the economic and social impact of the new project.”

It should be noted that the commencement of the “Eastern Entrepreneurs” program was accompanied by an intensive media and advertising campaign, including the distribution of publicity posters in a large number of government departments, private offices, faculties and institutes. It was also accompanied by meetings introducing the program to students of the Faculty of Economics at the Euphrates University, and also to students from Jaami’yat Al-Jazeera Al-Khaasa.