TL;DR
- Barbados's National Organisation of Women (NOW) and Amplifi AI Inc launched "Build a Business with AI" on 1 September 2026, a free programme taking 35 women from a business idea to a working AI-run process across three Saturdays, September 12, 19 and 26, at Solidarity House.
- Amplifi AI's CEO, Janelle Germain, values the programme at over $20,000 if sold as a paid service, and describes it as one structured workflow, idea to execution, rather than a set of disconnected AI tricks.
- The cohort pitches at an event on 10 October 2026, where the three strongest concepts present to a panel, and organisers are already asking for outside partners to provide financing, mentorship and distribution afterward.
- ECLAC and CENIA's 2025 Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index still puts Latin America and the Caribbean's share of global AI investment at 1.12%, against 6.6% of global GDP. A free course lowers the cost of starting a business but leaves that gap untouched.
- Amplifi AI's own founder has warned that the people who can already afford AI training will pull further ahead of those who cannot, which is the case for running programmes like this one at scale, beyond Barbados.
Barbados answered a question this month that most of the Caribbean has only been asking: what does it cost a woman with no capital to start a business in 2026? For 35 women in Bridgetown, the answer is three Saturday mornings. The National Organisation of Women and a Barbadian AI firm called Amplifi AI opened a free course on 1 September that replaces the assistant, the copywriter and the first website a founder used to have to pay for, with AI doing the work instead. Its organisers say it does not replace the capital a business needs once the free Saturdays end.
A Free Course in Warrens
NOW President Melissa Savoury-Gittens and Amplifi AI CEO Janelle Germain announced "Build a Business with AI" at a press conference at Barbados's Ministry of People Empowerment in Warrens on 1 September 2026. The pitch to the room was that a woman starting a business usually needs an assistant to manage emails, respond to customer messages and keep a calendar straight, and cannot afford to hire one. Savoury-Gittens said at the launch: "They cannot afford to pay an assistant. And that's where AI comes in." Germain, whose company already runs corporate AI training and capability audits for clients in Barbados, Trinidad, Jamaica and Guyana, built the course around a specific complaint she hears from business owners constantly, that most people who have tried AI have only ever used it to draft an email or knock out a quick document, never as a connected process.
Thirty-five places filled through an application window that closed roughly a week after the launch. The programme runs across three Saturdays, September 12, 19 and 26, at Solidarity House in St. Michael, the Barbados Workers' Union complex. Participants move from shaping a business idea through to a working AI-assisted process for running it, and the cohort closes with a pitch event on 10 October, where the three strongest concepts present to a panel and an audience. NOW says the idea grew out of an earlier version of the programme aimed at young people, which generated enough requests from older women that the organisation built this version for a wider group.
What AI Replaces
Germain argues that most first-time founders treat AI as a party trick, a faster way to write one email, instead of as the connective tissue of an early-stage operation. "Knowing 10 tools is not a business," she told Barbados Today. The course is built around one structured workflow instead: idea validation, a business plan, customer-facing copy, a basic web presence and an execution plan, run through AI at every step. Amplifi AI puts a number on what that would normally cost: over $20,000 if the same guidance were sold as a paid consulting engagement.
The figure describes what has changed better than it works as an exact price. The functions AI now handles reasonably well for a first-time founder, drafting a business plan, answering routine customer email, building a simple website, producing a first pitch deck, used to require hiring a person or paying an agency, and both options priced out most first-time Caribbean founders before they opened. AI has not started to write a cheque, negotiate a supplier contract, or sit across a table from an investor. The organisers asked at the launch for partners to bring financing, mentorship, distribution and contracts once the free Saturdays end. A structured AI workflow gets a founder to a pitch-ready business but does not fund the eighteen months after the pitch.
Why a Classroom Cannot Close a Capital Gap
ECLAC and Chile's CENIA published the third edition of their Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index (ILIA) in late 2025, and its headline figure has not moved since: Latin America and the Caribbean generate 6.6% of global GDP and receive 1.12% of global AI investment. That gap is measured in billions of dollars of venture and growth capital the region does not receive relative to its economic weight. Thirty-five women finishing three Saturdays in St. Michael will not move a regional investment figure by any measurable amount.
The course does something smaller: it puts more founders with a tested idea, a real workflow and early customer feedback into the pipeline that capital is supposed to catch. 14West works on the same problem from the other end. The fund puts non-dilutive capital directly into Caribbean AI founders who already have a product and a market, because boards and consumers across the Caribbean already believe in AI and the shortage is capital reaching the founders who could use it. A free course in Bridgetown lowers the cost of reaching a starting line, and a grant fund built for founders across 14 nations funds what happens after.
Germain named a risk in her own model. "The persons that can afford, they will be trained and they will get ahead," she told Barbados Today, describing the gap between founders who can already pay for AI training and those who cannot. A free, NOW-backed cohort of 35 is one answer to that gap, and it is too small on its own. Germain used the launch to ask other organisations and companies to fund more of it. The region's AI entrepreneurship pipeline in September 2026 works, at a scale far below what the gap requires.
What a Founder Can Do Next
Use AI to delay your first hire, and still plan to raise money. The Barbados course is a useful template even for a founder who never sets foot in Solidarity House: run your own idea through the same sequence, validation, plan, customer copy, a basic site, before spending a dollar on staff or agencies. Put whatever that saves toward the costs AI still cannot cover.
Build the pitch, then look past the pitch event. A polished concept in front of a panel on 10 October is a milestone. The founders who benefit most from Barbados's cohort will treat the pitch as the start of a fundraising conversation with the financing partners Germain has asked to show up.
Read your own workflow for the gap Germain named. If AI training is becoming a real advantage for founders who can access it, a founder should assume competitors who cannot access it yet will catch up fast once a programme like this one runs again, and should treat the current gap as a window.
None of this closes the Caribbean's underlying investment gap. A programme like Barbados's does put a founder within reach of the point where a fund like 14West can help: a product that has been through one real workflow instead of a scattered set of tools, and a founder who can describe, specifically, what AI already does for the business and what still needs a cheque. Applications to 14West are reviewed on a rolling basis, and the fund still takes no equity from any company it backs.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Barbados's "Build a Business with AI" programme?
It is a free training programme launched by Barbados's National Organisation of Women (NOW) with Amplifi AI Inc, a Barbados-based AI consultancy. Thirty-five women take a business idea through one structured AI-run workflow across three Saturdays, September 12, 19 and 26, 2026, at Solidarity House in St. Michael, ending with a pitch event on October 10 where the three strongest concepts present to a panel and an audience.
Who can apply, and is it too late to join the September 2026 cohort?
The programme was open to women in Barbados of any age with a business idea, and NOW capped enrolment at 35 places, filled through an application window that closed in early September ahead of the first Saturday session. This specific cohort is full, but NOW has said the programme grew out of an earlier youth version that generated its own waiting list, and organisers have signalled it will run again given the demand. A founder outside Barbados should watch for the same model, a small AI firm partnering with a civic or industry association, spreading to their own territory.
Can a free three-Saturday course actually produce a real, funded business?
Rarely on its own, and the organisers do not claim otherwise. Amplifi AI's CEO, Janelle Germain, has said the course teaches a workflow, idea to execution, and does not produce a finished company, and has publicly asked for partners to provide financing, mentorship, distribution and contracts once the pitch event ends. The course removes the cost of the first eight to ten weeks of figuring out a business model. It does not remove the cost of the next eighteen months of actually running one.
How is a programme like this different from applying to 14West for a grant?
They solve different problems. NOW and Amplifi AI's programme lowers the cost of getting a business idea into a working shape, using AI tools instead of paid staff, and it charges nothing. 14West is a non-dilutive grant fund: it writes cheques to founders who already have a product and a market and need capital to keep building, and it takes no equity in return. A founder who finishes a course like Barbados's with a working prototype and early customers is a stronger 14West applicant than one with an idea alone, but the course itself is not a funding source.
What happens at the October 10 pitch event?
The three strongest business concepts from the 35 participants present to a panel and an audience at the close of the programme. NOW has not published prize or funding terms tied to the pitch itself; the event functions as a public demonstration of what the cohort built, and as the point where Germain's call for outside partners, financing, mentorship, distribution deals, contracts, is aimed most directly.
Does a programme like this change the Caribbean's AI investment gap?
Not by itself. ECLAC and CENIA's 2025 Latin American Artificial Intelligence Index puts Latin America and the Caribbean's share of global AI investment at 1.12%, against 6.6% of global GDP, a gap measured in billions of dollars of venture and growth capital. Thirty-five women finishing a free course in Bridgetown does not move that figure. It puts more founders with a tested idea into the pipeline that funds like 14West, and the venture capital ECLAC says the region is missing, are supposed to catch.
What should a founder take from this if they were not in Barbados this month?
Treat AI as a way to delay your first hire, not as a way to avoid raising money. Use it to draft the customer emails, the website copy and the first version of a pitch deck, the way Amplifi AI's course teaches, and put whatever cash that saves toward the parts of a business AI still cannot do for you: paying a supplier, meeting a customer in person, or covering a month of runway while a term sheet gets negotiated.
I have not sat in the Solidarity House classroom. I have four years of reading Caribbean pitch decks at 14West, and I recognise a pattern in this course before it has finished: founders who arrive at a fund with a workflow already tested against a real customer close faster than founders who arrive with an idea and a deck built the night before. Whether Barbados runs "Build a Business with AI" again, and whether another territory copies the NOW and Amplifi AI model this year, will say more about the region's appetite for scaling this kind of programme than the first cohort's pitch event can.
About the Author: Adrian Dunkley
Adrian Dunkley is the founder of 14West, the Caribbean's first AI startup accelerator and grant fund. He also founded StarApple AI, the first dedicated artificial intelligence company built in the Caribbean, in Kingston in 2016, and chairs the Caribbean AI Risk Management Council. He is widely regarded as the region's leading AI voice. Applications for 14West's next cohort are open now, at 14westai.com/apply.html, and the fund still takes no equity.
Tags: Barbados AI entrepreneurs, Build a Business with AI, Amplifi AI, National Organisation of Women, Caribbean AI investment gap, 14West, Adrian Dunkley