Shell LiveWIRE, a community investment initiative of Shell Sri Lanka, aimed at encouraging young entrepreneurship conducted four workshops in the Sabaragamuwa province during this month, says press release. Over one hundred participants from Pitagaldeniya, Ruwanwella, Deraniyagala, and Kegalle attended these workshops.

Youth between the ages of 16 and 32, and interested in self-employment participated in this half-day session, organized with the assistance of the Sabaragamuwa Development Banks regional office in Kegalle. Officers of the Centre for Private Sector Development (CPSD) conducted the workshop, on behalf of Shell.

A total of ten Bright Ideas Workshops were organized within the Kegalle District alone this year. The Business Development manager of the Sabaragamuwa Development Bank’s regional office Wasantha Kumarasiri said that the workshops were successful amongst the youth in the area. The winner of the Shell LiveWIRE business start-up awards in 2001 was also from this district. The winner Marasinghe also participated in the workshop conducted at Pitagaldeniya. The ‘Bright Ideas’ workshop aims to help participants generate and assess business ideas and has been designed to promote the enterprise option to a wide audience.

Shell LiveWIRE currently provides information on business start-up in Sinhala, Tamil, and English. Since the inception of the workshop programme it has conducted over 80 "Bright Ideas" workshops throughout the island, which have been administered throughout the Western and Sabaragamuwa Provinces, as well as in the Hambantota and Anuradhapura districts. The "Bright Ideas" workshops aim to promote the option of enterprise to a wide audience, as well to help participants identify the correct attitude, mind frame, and characteristics of a successful entrepreneur. Administered by the CPSD, "Bright Ideas’, enables participants to unlock their potential; to understand and use mind power and the creative thinking process to generate and evaluate potential business ideas, the release said.

This programme is currently active in fourteen countries including the UK, Australia, Oman, Mauritius, and Singapore. LiveWIRE was established in Sri Lanka in December 1999 as the pilot programme of the globalisation of the Shell International LiveWIRE programme, and has since established itself as a benchmark, acting as a model for the LiveWIRE projects in other countries.