DIA Urban Lab — Citi Foundation's Youth Innovation Pipeline in Kingston

The DIA Urban Lab (Democratizing Innovation in the Americas) is a Citi Foundation-funded youth-innovation programme in Kingston, Jamaica, delivered by the Trust for the Americas with local partner the Institute of Law & Economics (ILE) since 2016. It targets Jamaicans aged 16–29 with innovation and entrepreneurship training, mentorship and technology access, with participants competing for seed funding through periodic 'Pitch Tank' competitions.

Programme totals reported by the Trust for the Americas grew from roughly 1,100 youth trained and 68 ventures funded as of 2019 to more than 1,350 youth and 88 funded projects by the mid-2020s, with individual grant rounds averaging tens of participants — one 2019 round split a USD 10,000 pool across ten entrepreneurs. In 2020 the programme added a digital-literacy and data-science track targeting at-risk youth's employability, and in 2019 it formalised a mentorship partnership with the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) to pair Pitch Tank winners with business mentors. The same DIA model was subsequently replicated by Citi Foundation and the Trust for the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

The published metrics are programme-reported reach and funding counts rather than externally audited outcome evaluations — there is no independent tracking of venture survival, revenue or job creation after the grant stage. Independent Jamaican press (the Jamaica Gleaner) has covered individual funding rounds and the PSOJ mentorship agreement, corroborating the programme's existence and cadence without independently verifying the cumulative totals.

Read the full analysis: https://www.trustfortheamericas.org/press-room/releases/jamaica-entrepreneurs-receive-funding-dia-urban-la