In an event char­ac­terised by en­er­gy and op­ti­mism, 19 young peo­ple suc­cess­ful­ly grad­u­at­ed from BP Trinidad and To­ba­go's (bpTT) Brighter Prospects schol­ar­ship pro­gramme in a lav­ish cer­e­mo­ny held at the Hilton Ho­tel's Scar­let Ibis Room last Wednes­day. All res­i­dents of the wider Ma­yaro com­mu­ni­ty, the stu­dents grad­u­at­ed this year from ter­tiary lev­el in­sti­tu­tions, with five ex­celling with First Class Ho­n­ours from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. Brighter Prospects is one of bpTT's flag­ship pro­grammes in the com­pa­ny's long­stand­ing com­mit­ment to in­vest­ing in hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment.

Since 2003, the ini­tia­tive has pro­vid­ed fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to stu­dents from Ma­yaro and en­vi­rons who gain ac­cess to ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion at ap­proved in­sti­tu­tions.Re­designed fol­low­ing the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE), it of­fers up to $10,000 an­nu­al­ly in aca­d­e­m­ic sup­port to re­cip­i­ents. In­spir­ing the grad­u­ates with words of en­cour­age­ment was bpTT's re­gion­al pres­i­dent, Nor­man Christie."As fu­ture lead­ers, your ac­com­plish­ments mat­ter a great deal to Trinidad and To­ba­go, to bpTT and to me, per­son­al­ly. As you con­tin­ue along your jour­ney of self-ac­tu­al­i­sa­tion, I want you to keep three prin­ci­ples in mind: fol­low your pas­sions in life by do­ing the things that you love, nev­er for­get where you've come from and most im­por­tant­ly, al­ways live to give. In every way, you will al­ways be our brighter prospects and your en­er­gy is our na­tion's great­est re­source."

It was a proud mo­ment for ho­n­our stu­dent Crys­tal Roberts, who grad­u­at­ed with a BSc De­gree in Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence and So­ci­ol­o­gy. "Brighter Prospects went be­yond be­ing just giv­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to us. The com­pa­ny main­tained con­stant con­tact and pro­vid­ed aca­d­e­m­ic guid­ance and mo­ti­va­tion on a per­son­al lev­el. Even as I go on to do my Mas­ters, I am look­ing at ways that I can start giv­ing back be­cause this wasn't on­ly an in­vest­ment in me; it was an in­vest­ment in my com­mu­ni­ty. I'm go­ing to en­sure that the in­vest­ment pays off," Roberts de­clared. Giselle Thomp­son, bpTT's vice pres­i­dent, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs, re­mind­ed the 2011 alum­ni that they had joined over 75 stu­dents who have suc­cess­ful­ly grad­u­at­ed from the pro­gramme and that they now pro­vide in­spi­ra­tion to more than 250 stu­dents cur­rent­ly en­rolled. This year's grad­u­at­ing class reg­is­tered a bench­mark achieve­ment with five stu­dents achiev­ing the dis­tinc­tion of ho­n­ours in their fields of study.

The grad­u­ates were ad­dressed by mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er J Er­rol Lewis, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Ju­nior Achieve­ment, an or­gan­i­sa­tion that has col­lab­o­rat­ed with bpTT for over 40 years. "In a so­ci­ety char­ac­terised by neg­a­tiv­i­ty, bpTT has gone against the tide by try­ing to up­lift so­ci­ety, es­pe­cial­ly through in­vest­ment in young peo­ple like your­selves. As you go for­ward, re­mem­ber that you must give back as much as you get in or­der to cre­ate a cy­cle that will take us for­ward to a brighter fu­ture," he urged them.

Adding fur­ther in­cen­tive to the stu­dents was bpTT's vice pres­i­dent of Hu­man Re­sources, Ja­nine Am­brose-Sali­na. "Hav­ing done so well, I'm sure that you're all up for the next chal­lenge and that's where our Chal­lenger Pro­gramme comes in. In seek­ing to con­stant­ly re­new the skills base of the com­pa­ny, we re­cruit and of­fer in­tern­ship train­ing to na­tion­als who rep­re­sent the best and bright­est uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates. There are cur­rent­ly 60 chal­lengers work­ing in var­i­ous de­part­ments at bpTT and I en­cour­age you try and join their ranks as you ful­fil your po­ten­tial."

Speak­ing on be­half of their peers were ho­n­our stu­dents Jus­tine Ka­jal De­onar­ine and Keila Fras­er. De­onar­ine not­ed, "As a com­pa­ny in­vest­ing in the fu­ture, you have shown ex­tra­or­di­nary com­mit­ment to the peo­ple of Ma­yaro and you be­lieved in us when we didn't even be­lieve in our­selves. You have opened the world to us and in do­ing so you have re­vealed Ma­yaro to the world. Op­por­tu­ni­ty is your great­est gift to us and you have giv­en us a fu­ture filled with brighter prospects."