With more than 80 stu­dents from four sec­ondary schools in south-east Trinidad ben­e­fit­ing from an in­ten­sive train­ing course, the busi­ness skills de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme im­ple­ment­ed by the Ma­yaro Ini­tia­tive for Pri­vate En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment (Miped) has re­alised its main ob­jec­tive of steer­ing young peo­ple to the world of busi­ness.

Stu­dents of Guayagua­yare Sec­ondary and Rio Claro West Sec­ondary have com­plet­ed 12 con­tact hours of train­ing and now join the ranks of their peers at Ma­yaro Sec­ondary and Rio Claro East Sec­ondary, who took part in the train­ing ini­tia­tive fa­cil­i­tat­ed by lec­tur­ers from the Youth Train­ing and Em­ploy­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (Ytepp).

Start­ed by en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2002, Miped fa­cil­i­tates de­vel­op­ment of small busi­ness en­tre­pre­neurs and con­tributes to de­vel­op­ment of the south-east­ern com­mu­ni­ty by pro­vid­ing a com­bi­na­tion of fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to in­ter­est­ed peo­ple. To date, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has in­vest­ed more than $45 mil­lion and cre­at­ed more than 2,000 per­ma­nent and 4,000 tem­po­rary jobs.

Miped man­ag­er Rachael Ho­sein ex­plained: "We be­lieve that Miped has a part to play in sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of a strong and vi­brant en­tre­pre­neur­ial class in Ma­yaro and en­vi­rons. For this rea­son we tar­get­ed the younger mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty who will be mak­ing ear­ly steps to­ward ca­reer paths.

"At the on­set, the train­ing will help bol­ster their school-based train­ing, but the re­al ob­jec­tive is to en­er­gise these young peo­ple in­to start­ing their own busi­ness­es and we are pro­vid­ing them with the tools and sup­port to do so suc­cess­ful­ly."Sam­myel­la Grant, a Form Four stu­dent at Guayagua­yare Sec­ondary, said she felt em­pow­ered af­ter the in­ten­sive train­ing.

"Com­plet­ing the busi­ness plan was a bit chal­leng­ing but thanks to the guid­ance of our busi­ness teacher and the lec­tur­ers from Ytepp, we were able to grasp the fun­da­men­tals of the course. Al­though it will help in my stud­ies, this wasn't just about train­ing for school, this was re­al­ly train­ing for life. It has opened my eyes about go­ing in­to busi­ness one day, and with this train­ing and the sup­port of Miped, I know that I have a great head start," she said.

As part of the train­ing ini­tia­tive, each school chose a unique busi­ness idea, and ei­ther in­di­vid­u­al­ly or in groups, stu­dents cov­ered all as­pects of cre­at­ing a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment plan for mi­cro-en­tre­pre­neurs, in­clud­ing reg­is­tra­tion de­tails, de­vel­op­ing a mar­ket­ing plan, prepar­ing cash-flow pro­jec­tions and a pro­ject­ed in­come state­ment.As an added in­cen­tive to the stu­dents, fol­low­ing the sub­mis­sion of all the com­plet­ed busi­ness plans, there will be an eval­u­a­tion by Miped and Ytepp with awards pre­sent­ed to the top stu­dents.

Giv­ing full marks to the ini­tia­tive was Chris­to Cave, di­rec­tor�en­tre­pre­neur­ial de­vel­op­ment and sup­port ser­vices, Ytepp.

"En­tre­pre­neur­ial train­ing rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant com­po­nent of Ytepp's mis­sion to de­vel­op young peo­ple. This part­ner­ship with Miped is an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pose busi­ness-mind­ed stu­dents to the dy­nam­ics of en­tre­pre­neur­ial think­ing. It is an ex­cel­lent foun­da­tion and we ex­pect that it will grow and come to fruition with the es­tab­lish­ment of new and in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness­es across Ma­yaro and en­vi­rons in set­ting an ex­am­ple for the en­tire na­tion to fol­low," Cave said.