On Sat­ur­day 19th March, 2011 the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce host­ed its Na­tion­al Youth Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Fo­rum (NYPF) at the Hilton, Trinidad. This year the fo­rum was cen­tred on Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,En­tre­pre­neur­ship and In­no­va­tion.The fo­rum fea­tured the top four schools in the com­pe­ti­tion that pre­sent­ed on the per­spec­tives of Civil­So­ci­ety, Busi­ness, Labour and Gov­ern­ment. These schools were AS­JA Girls' Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas, St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain and Ves­signy­Gov­ern­mentSec­ondary School re­spec­tive­ly.

Each of the schools had to present on how in­te­gral their per­spec­tive was to the over­all­pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The rules of the fo­rum were sim­ple, each school was giv­en a 10-minute open­ing state­ment, this was fol­lowed by a 30-minute free flow­ing dis­cus­sion be­tween all four schools and each then con­clud­ed with a 5-minute clos­ing state­ment. AS­JA Girls' Col­lege fea­tured dra­ma in their open­ing state­ment, with a Ja­maican char­ac­ter by the name of 'Char­lie'. The girls made a very 'edu-tain­ing' pre­sen­ta­tion by clear­ly defin­ing Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, En­tre­pre­neur­ship and In­no­va­tion and the func­tion of the Civ­il So­ci­ety.

This was then fol­lowed by the very com­i­cal 'Char­lie', who reer­enced the ma­te­r­i­al to his life. The girls gave con­crete ex­am­ples of var­i­ous Non Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tions as well asem­pha­sis­ingthe im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and its func­tion in to­day's so­ci­ety. Nicholas Wade con­fi­dent­ly rep­re­sent­ed Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege of Ch­agua­nas, as the main speak­er for his con­tin­gent. Their pre­sen­ta­tion could have been com­pared to an ef­fi­cient ter­tiary analy­sis of the Busi­ness per­spec­tive.

They in­ter­linked the idea of in­no­va­tion with lo­cal ex­am­ples of the elec­tron­ic steel pan for eco­nom­ic ben­e­fit, as well as SM Jaleel's in­no­v­a­tive idea to cre­ate a soft drink to fit the hands of a young child (Chub­by). They al­so made com­par­isons to Dar­ren Ma­haraj's fa­mous Jap's Fried Chick­en and its re­sound­ing suc­cess as a lo­cal busi­ness with over five out­lets na­tion­wide.Ri­han­na Richards of St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain was with­out a doubt one of the most elo­quent speak­ers of the fo­rum, de­liv­er­ing her words in a very­in­ti­mat­estyle which made for an ef­fec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion.

Em­pow­er­ing the labour force was the school's main fo­cus, stat­ing that such em­pow­er­ment would en­cour­age em­ploy­ees to be moredili­gent­work­ers and would lead them to be in­no­va­tors in their own right. The girls made ref­er­ence to the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Cor­po­rate Busi­ness Mod­el and its vi­tal need to the labour force. Their con­crete ex­am­ple of the nonunionised Google com­pa­ny had the au­di­ence in a bit of stir, as St Joseph's Con­vent re­lat­ed that the Google com­pa­ny pro­vides all needs to their em­ploy­ees (in­clud­ing ar­eas for recre­ation and re­lax­ation).

The Gov­ern­ment per­spec­tive was pre­sent­ed by Ves­signy Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School, and their con­tin­gent must be ap­plaud­ed for their in­no­va­tion of a the­o­ret­i­cal math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion which il­lus­trat­ed that­pro­duc­tiv­i­ty (P)was­max­imised­by the pres­ence of­gov­ern­ment. Dur­ing the dis­cus­sion round, this was quick­ly op­posed by Nicholas Wade of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, stat­ing that with­in their equa­tion, the place­ment of the de­nom­i­na­tor in­di­cat­ed a de­crease in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. How­ev­er, Ves­signy Sec­ondary re­butted, stat­ing that it sim­ply says that with­out­gov­ern­ment,pro­duc­tiv­i­ty­would de­crease.