Ronald Cetoute is a Haitian-American educator and entrepreneur born in Miami, Florida.
After graduating from high school, I attended Florida A&M University where I received my bachelors and master’s degrees. I am also currently a doctoral candidate at Columbus State University and living in Atlanta, Georgia. I began working in higher education shortly after graduating with my master’s degree where I gained a passion for helping students. During this time, I also realized some of the doors that education opened and wanted to give more people access to this. Being a first generation Haitian-American, I knew at some point that I would act on my desire to give back to Haiti.
After a few years of working at Albany State University in Albany, Georgia, I became a member of the Georgia Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. As a member of the chamber, I met many people within the Haitian community that were thriving and saw it as an opportunity for the diaspora to get involved and give back through their expertise and experience. One day I met with the President of the chamber, Saurel Quettan, who inspired me to act on my vision of providing relevant education to entrepreneurs in Haiti. Saurel then introduced me to another member, Joseph Veve, who had a similar vision and through this, the BEL Initiative was created and launched in 2017.
The BEL initiative is a program under the Georgia Haitian-American Chamber of Commerce that provides entrepreneurship education and also connects Haiti-based entrepreneurs to resources. Every year, we select a group of entrepreneurs from Haiti and provide them with an opportunity to spend the summer in the United States which also exposes them to American business culture. The selected BEL fellows get a chance to spend time on different university campuses, meet with business men and women, visit small and large businesses, and experience cultural exchange. We do this because we believe that entrepreneurs are one of the key factors to developing the Haiti that we all want to see. Entrepreneurs solve problems, create jobs, and support local economies. However, they need support and an environment to nurture their growth for this to be effective in a country like Haiti.
This year the BEL Initiative has received support from partners like University of Iowa John PappaJohn Entrepreneurial Center, the United States Embassy in Haiti, and Sa Se Biznis Pam. With these partnerships, we plan to continue expanding the program in a way that will have a stronger impact. COVID-19 has really changed how things were planned for the 2020 program, but we have used this delay to plan bigger and better things for 2021. We also launched our BEL Sessions series to provide informational and educational topics via video to continue our educational efforts during the pandemic. Everyone can watch these videos for free on our website at belinitiative.com.
I encourage the entrepreneurs in Haiti to keep learning, keep getting better, keep solving problems, and grow smarter. We believe in you and support these entrepreneurial efforts. I also encourage entrepreneurs to reach out and give us suggestions on how the BEL team and the rest of diaspora can help.
You can email us at info@belinitiative.com
Learn more and follow us on facebook/instagram: @belinitiative
Reach out to me on instagram: @roncetoute or on LinkedIn
Ronald Cetoute
Video from Youtube
