Rashan­da Mc Ken­na

Four schools bat­tled each oth­er in a war of words for the fi­nals of the Na­tion­al Youth Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty Fo­rum (NYPF) at the Hilton last week­end. The event was an ini­tia­tive of Am­Cham T&T Trade and In­vest­ment Com­mit­tee, and it was host­ed in con­junc­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA). The NYPF ac­tive­ly en­gaged Form Six stu­dents so that they un­der­stood glob­al is­sues and pos­si­ble so­lu­tions. Am­Cham's goal was to al­low the stu­dents to em­ploy the art of crit­i­cal think­ing, in­no­va­tion and re­search. St Mary's Col­lege, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Mir­a­cle Min­istries Pen­te­costal High School and Ves­signy Sec­ondary School were the four fi­nal­ists.

A les­son well learnt by these stu­dents was the con­nec­tiv­i­ty among ma­jor stake­hold­ers in so­ci­ety with­in busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, labour and the civ­il so­ci­ety, each of which the re­spec­tive schools rep­re­sent­ed. The schools were giv­en their mer­its of ap­pre­ci­a­tion by Am­Cham and the stu­dents were laud­ed for their ef­forts by Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Tim Goopeesingh, who was a pre­sen­ter at the cer­e­mo­ny. Gopeesingh en­cour­aged the part­ner­ship be­tween Am­Cham and the lo­cal ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor and urged young peo­ple to con­tin­ue to ex­cel and in­crease their in­volve­ment in is­sues per­tain­ing to the en­vi­ron­ment.