The Irene B Williams Secondary School will once again represent Antigua and Barbuda at this year’s Eastern Caribbean Securities Exchange (ESCE) Regional Schools Investment Competition.
The ESCE, on Monday, announced the eight schools that will be competing in the regional championships which will be judged from November 11th to November 20th.
The intra-country competition, which took place from October 21 to November 1, 2024, saw schools from across the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union compete in this first phase.
The Irene B Williams Secondary School’s “Green Magnates Ent” team were crowned the winners of the intra-country competition for the second year in a row.
The team consists of Javorn Simon, Leonid Julian, Raffael Davis, and Ronny Cain and coached by their Principles of Business teacher, Antonia Sampson.
Observer media spoke to Sampson about this year’s competition, who shared that “It gives the young people a great sense of value to know that they’re able to participate in [and] take confidence in handling financial decisions.”
Further on the importance of the competition, Sampson said: “They [the ESCE] wanted to encourage young people to start to learn the intent of the Securities and Stock Exchange, that we do have a stock market and basically, bring a younger audience … so that they will start investing at a younger age; so it is all about education.”
The participants are “Adelphi Enterprise” of Adelphi Secondary from St Vincent and the Grenadines; “Market Masters” from Dominica’s Arthur Waldron SDA Academy; “Boys on the Hill Investment” from Grenada Boys Secondary School; “CHSS Emerging Investors” of Saint Lucia’s Choiseul Secondary School; and “Innovative Traders” of St Kitts and Nevis’s Saddlers Secondary School.
The six schools will be joined by the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School’s “Rainbow City Investors” of Anguilla and the Montserrat Secondary School’s “Alliougana Hub”.
The competition’s format has changed this year as the teams will now start with a set number of shares in various companies and having to strategise their buying and selling, while also maintaining a cash balance under $10,000 with a video component also included.
