The en­er­gy and ex­cite­ment were pal­pa­ble as a record-break­ing 235 sec­ondary school stu­dents, rep­re­sent­ing 32 schools across south Trinidad, took part in the open­ing edi­tion of this year's Unique­ly Wor­thy youth de­vel­op­ment work­shops at Paria Suites, La Ro­main, on Sat­ur­day.

Jerome La Rode, a Form Six stu­dent at Moru­ga Sec­ondary School, em­braced the work­shop as a life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. "I didn't know what to ex­pect and I was a lit­tle wor­ried, but at the end of the day, we were all giv­en the mo­ti­va­tion to im­prove our­selves and achieve our full po­ten­tial. The mes­sages were pos­i­tive and al­lowed us to con­nect as peers and see our­selves as achiev­ers and lead­ers. It was amaz­ing to be a part of Unique­ly Wor­thy, and leav­ing here, I feel that I am tru­ly unique and wor­thy," stat­ed an elat­ed La Rode.

Start­ed in 2009, the Unique­ly Wor­thy ini­tia­tive is a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween bpTT and Unit­ed Way T&T. It is ap­proved by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, as well as the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly's Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth Af­fairs and Sport. The pro­gramme en­gages the opin­ions, col­lab­o­ra­tion and ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of young peo­ple through a range of top­ics, in­clud­ing valu­ing one's self, em­brac­ing one's peers and dis­cov­er­ing and liv­ing one's pur­pose.

In a re­lease, Ron­da Fran­cis, cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty man­ag­er, bpTT, un­der­scored the com­pa­ny's sup­port of the pro­gramme: "We are a re­source-based com­pa­ny and recog­nise that our young peo­ple are among our na­tion's great­est re­sources. Unique­ly Wor­thy falls di­rect­ly in line with our cor­po­rate vi­sion to par­tic­i­pate ac­tive­ly in the de­vel­op­ment of the coun­try by im­pact­ing the life of every cit­i­zen in a pos­i­tive man­ner. Over the years, the feed­back from young peo­ple, their teach­ers and par­ents–cer­ti­fy­ing that these work­shops have opened minds and trans­formed lives–is con­fir­ma­tion that this part­ner­ship with Unit­ed Way is mak­ing a re­al dif­fer­ence."

Wayne Moze, di­rec­tor, Unit­ed Way T&T, wel­comed the stu­dents and laid the way for Don La Fou­cade and J Er­rol Lewis, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man at Ju­nior Achieve­ment of T&T.

As one of the founders of Unique­ly Wor­thy, La Fou­cade was ex­cit­ed by the high­est-ever stu­dent turnout and saw it as a val­i­da­tion of the work­shop's mis­sion to help young peo­ple Dis­cov­er the Unique­ness With­in YOU-TH.

"For me, it's an in­de­scrib­able joy to see the pos­i­tive en­er­gy of young peo­ple on full dis­play. Peo­ple of­ten find fault in to­day's youth, but through these work­shops, I am mov­ing away from brand­ing them as a prob­lem and in­stead, mak­ing them a part of the so­lu­tion. We show them that they are unique­ly in­di­vid­ual and wor­thy of the fu­ture. I look at these young peo­ple and I see a bright fu­ture for our na­tion," La Fou­cade ex­plained.

Ma­yaro Sec­ondary School teacher, Trudy Har­ri­paul, and a num­ber of her col­leagues from var­i­ous schools, served as ob­servers and gave feed­back on the ses­sion.

Ac­cord­ing to Har­ri­paul, "The en­thu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pa­tion of these stu­dents was as in­spi­ra­tional to me as I am sure the work­shop was to them. As a teacher in Ma­yaro, I have been priv­i­leged to see first­hand the pos­i­tive in­vest­ments bpTT has made in young peo­ple and this col­lab­o­ra­tion with Unit­ed Way is giv­ing young peo­ple a sense of pur­pose and di­rec­tion that will serve them well, not on­ly in aca­d­e­mics, but in life over­all. This was tru­ly a Unique­ly Wor­thy ex­pe­ri­ence."

The sec­ond work­shop will host sec­ondary stu­dents from north Trinidad and will be held at Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on March 21.

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