New­ly ap­point­ed CEO of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Gabriel Faria was warm­ly wel­comed on board yes­ter­day when he at­tend­ed the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny for the or­gan­sa­tion's Jump­Start Pro­gramme. Faria will take over from Cather­ine Ku­mar who re­tires on Sep­tem­ber 30. In an ad­dress at the cer­e­mo­ny, Jacque­line Fran­cois, a di­rec­tor of the Cham­ber, thanked Ku­mar for her many years of ser­vice and ded­i­ca­tion. She then went on to ad­dress the Jump­Start grad­u­ates, telling them they are crit­i­cal as­set to the fu­ture suc­cess of T&T.

"Every choice you make and every ac­tion you take will de­ter­mine the progress, growth and de­vel­op­ment of our beloved coun­try," she said. The Jump­Start pro­gramme is an ini­tia­tive of the Cham­ber's No­va Com­mit­tee. Yes­ter­day, 83 stu­dents grad­u­at­ed from the pro­gramme af­ter com­plet­ing ap­pren­tice­ships with 48 par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies and or­gan­i­sa­tions across the coun­try.

Fran­cois com­mend­ed the grad­u­ates for their per­sis­tence and ded­i­ca­tion over the months of train­ing and urged them to stay fo­cused. "With­out a doubt, the path­way to suc­cess is a rich­ly re­ward­ing one. We must har­ness our willpow­er to stay fo­cused on your goals. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less, as long as you re­main ded­i­cat­ed to your tasks, with a sense of pur­pose set firm­ly in your hearts and minds.

Al­ways re­mem­ber that giv­ing up is not an op­tion." At­tor­ney-at-law Jonathan Bha­gan urged the young peo­ple to keep seek­ing ed­u­ca­tion when­ev­er there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty. Shar­ing his own keys to his suc­cess, Bha­gan ad­mit­ted to fail­ing ex­am­i­na­tions but em­pha­sised that he nev­er gave up. "The on­ly per­son you have to be bet­ter than is your pre­vi­ous self.

I used to fail ex­ams in Form Four, I failed Physics al­most every time I sat ex­ams. I al­so failed Maths of­ten. The prob­lem was more to do with my par­ent's sep­a­ra­tion and my broth­er's death dur­ing those years than any­thing else. I just wasn't fo­cused on school," he said.

"I didn't let fail­ure be­come a la­bel, I worked at it and by the time I sat CXC I got one's in both Maths and Physics. If you want to be great you have to learn from your mis­takes and keep the faith which is the se­cret to suc­cess."