Sarah-Lee Man­mo­han

Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies

Shake­speare once said that the "world is mine oys­ter", or in mod­ern terms, "the world is yours for the tak­ing, what­ev­er you make of it." This was the at­mos­phere at the UK Train­ing/HR/Ed­u­ca­tion Ex­hi­bi­tion held at Crowne Plaza Ho­tel on Wednes­day 23rd No­vem­ber, 2011.When we are young, op­por­tu­ni­ties may present them­selves in a num­ber of ways, and we are faced with the de­ci­sion to take them or to al­low oth­ers to grab them. As I en­tered the ho­tel's ma­jes­tic ball­room, op­ti­mism em­anat­ed from the beige coloured walls and the chat­ter of men clad in jack­ets and ties filled my ears. "What is there to be so ex­cit­ed about?" I won­dered, but I was yet to find out.The world of op­por­tu­ni­ties that I had just walked in­to com­prised Unit­ed King­dom (UK) Cor­po­rate and Tech­ni­cal/Vo­ca­tion­al Train­ing Providers who en­hance em­ploy­ees' skill and per­for­mance, Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties of every imag­in­able dis­ci­pline, Ed­u­ca­tion­al Con­sul­tants and Re­source Sup­pli­ers that shared in­no­v­a­tive ways of learn­ing, and IT So­lu­tions Com­pa­nies and UK Pub­lish­ers of our very own Caribbean flavour and iden­ti­ty. All these com­pa­nies were vis­it­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go to pro­mote British cor­po­rate train­ing, ed­u­ca­tion and hu­man re­source whilst ex­pos­ing our gov­ern­ment and its peo­ple to UK trade and in­vest­ment. Those who at­tend­ed the event com­prised var­ied pro­fes­sions, ages and ed­u­ca­tion­al sta­tus­es, rang­ing from stu­dents to po­ets, en­gi­neers and CEOs from both the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors.In the ear­ly morn­ing's pro­ceed­ings, the event was chaired by the Deputy British High Com­mis­sion­er, Su­san Cur­tis, and the guests were wel­comed by the British High Com­mis­sion­er, HE Arthur Snell. Greet­ings were ex­tend­ed by our Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion, Tim Gopeesingh and the fea­ture ad­dress were words spo­ken by the Min­is­ter of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, Fazal Karim.

Some of the world's top uni­ver­si­ties such as Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge, York, Green­wich and Leices­ter were ever present, will­ing to lure any child in school uni­form to their booth. The uni­ver­si­ties of­fered op­por­tu­ni­ties to study abroad as well as long dis­tance learn­ing to stu­dents who may have been in­ter­est­ed in gain­ing UK qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Oth­er ex­hibitors of in­ter­est were Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, Frog Trade Lim­it­ed, Tie and Scarf Com­pa­ny and Han­sib Pub­li­ca­tions Lim­it­ed. Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Press dis­played a wide as­sort­ment of books, each unique­ly at­trac­tive to the eye with their ra­di­ant­ly coloured cov­ers. Frog Trade Lim­it­ed pre­sent­ed a dig­i­tal­ly en­hanced form of learn­ing, both in and out of the class­room. They mar­ket­ed a new form of ICTs (In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy) that per­son­alis­es the learn­ing plat­form for sec­ondary schools. The Tie and Scarf Com­pa­ny un­doubt­ed­ly drew the at­ten­tion of al­most every per­son in the room, win­ning at least a gaze from them. Their ta­ble tops were adorned with a col­lec­tion of ties and scarves, each hav­ing an in­di­vid­ual pat­tern or de­sign. Han­sib Pub­li­ca­tions who fo­cus on mul­ti­cul­tur­al pub­lish­ing and spe­cialis­es in Caribbean lit­er­a­ture, dis­played some of their ti­tles about slav­ery, Rasta­far­i­an­ism, crick­et, Trinidad and To­ba­go's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter, Caribbean cook­ing and our sun-kissed isles.Up­on my de­par­ture, the room still buzzed with ex­cite­ment. Walk­ing along the lob­by, a group of an­tic­i­pa­tive stu­dents who were head­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion stum­bled across my path. My lips thinned in­to a smile as I pon­dered the dis­cov­er­ies that they were about to make.