Pacific Business Trust held its inaugural Pacific Social Enterprise Summit on Tuesday 18 June 2019 at the Vodafone Event Centre in Manukau. Read Board Member Fa’amatuainu Tino Pereira’s remarks on the event.

What a great day it was!

The Hon. Minister of Pacific Peoples, Afioga Aupito Su’a William Sio epitomized our community’s search for a better and defining tomorrow as we promise to toil and lift our game to capture the opportunities offered.

When the Pacific Business Trust (PBT) re-calibrated its next landing, it envisaged a future driven by entrepreneurial enterprise in a search for Pacific prosperity, and a destiny of inter-generational success and achievement in the economic development space.

Our Social Enterprise Summit is a crucial part of this new landing, and by all accounts, the day served as beach-head for building the bridge to our communities to engage in a world of business that would be about them, for them, and for their families. The enthusiasm, the passion, the energy and the new sense of adventure greeted the Summit with many young Pacific entrepreneurs, and future business leaders keen to build a social enterprise movement for the future.

It was a positive environment and the buzz of participating in a new frontier of Pacific aspirations were real moments to savour, and if anything, PBT can only begin to build the ecosystems that would allow these dreams to materialize and flourish.

The key informants and specialist speakers for the Day were generous and fulsome in their sharing of insights, expertise and useful information. The Summit participants praised the opportunity to work together and to find fertile ground for more collaboration and innovation.

PBT now stands ready to work hard and robustly, and to be committed to helping aspiring and existing entrepreneurs deliver on their promise of success and achievement. PBT is now funded for its role and looking forward to a future of prosperity and positive well being.