MAKING A CLEAN SWEEP—A Urpreneur Story
As a 2021 graduate of The UWI, St. Augustine with a BSc in Leadership & Management and a Minor in Human Resources, Shaneeza Morris feels fully prepared to take on the service industry with her cleaning business. While admitting that her small business and degree are not particularly in the same field, Morris believes that the skills she attained at The UWI will help her make her business accessible and people-centred. For Morris, people are both clients and employees and her academic background has enhanced both her work ethic and people management skills. Morris is currently employed as a Customer Relations Officer, and has experience in customer service and quality control. In fact, it was while on a job that the idea for Morris’ cleaning business blossomed. In a previous position, she found herself cleaning the staff kitchen whenever she needed to use it. She did such a good job that co-workers mentioned it to her, and the compliments sparked an interest in turning this skill into a business.
Morris’ business isn’t solely about profit, however; she hopes to make cleaning services more affordable to the general public; to lessen poverty in her community by providing job opportunities; to help domestic workers upskill themselves, and to maintain a philanthropic side to the business. “Without sounding clichéd, I want to bring modernity and more professionalism to the industry and I want people to have more respect for domestic work. It’s not just cleaning—there’s much more you can branch out into—and it can be quite lucrative. The more people understand this, the more they’ll respect the domestic worker,”said Morris. Morris is happy to be a participant in the UrpreneurPlus Accelerator Programme and says her business will benefit from assistance with marketing, website development, scaling business-related costs, pricing, and giving the business increased visibility. The UrpreneurPlus Accelerator Programme is funded by the Unit Trust Corporation (UTC) of Trinidad & Tobago in partnership with UWI Ventures.
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