A stir­ring ap­peal for greater sup­port from the busi­ness sec­tor for the work of Ju­nior Achieve­ment (JA) was made by ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor J Er­rol Lewis as he ad­dressed stu­dents and mem­bers of the pub­lic at JA's 43rd An­nu­al Trade Fair at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, on April 12.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease, a to­tal of 750 stu­dents, rep­re­sent­ing more than 60 schools from six cen­tres in Trinidad, of­fered a wide range of hand­craft­ed items, head bands, ear­rings, wrist bands, jer­seys, cush­ions and oth­er items for sale at the fair.

"It is use­less to talk about bad be­hav­iour among our youths if we don't in­vest in train­ing and de­vel­op­ment of our young peo­ple," Lewis said.

"I look for­ward to all busi­ness groups in­vest­ing in the JA phi­los­o­phy and its ob­jec­tives in the fu­ture."

Lewis made spe­cial men­tion of plat­inum spon­sor BP Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT) for its long­stand­ing part­ner­ship, which had en­abled the JA pro­gramme to ex­pand to dif­fer­ent re­gions in Trinidad.

"Through bpTT's in­vest­ment we have done more than we ex­pect­ed."

The JA leader al­so thanked First Cit­i­zen's Bank and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd for their sup­port of the pro­gramme.

Gee­ta Ram­sumair of bpTT said the en­er­gy com­pa­ny was proud to be a part of the JA ini­tia­tive since it fo­cused on three of its core ar­eas: youth de­vel­op­ment, ed­u­ca­tion and en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

A for­mer JA mem­ber, Ram­sumair con­grat­u­lat­ed the stu­dents on "the cul­mi­na­tion of months of hard work" and urged them to use all they had learnt to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in the lives of their peers and in the coun­try.

Di­ane Bou­caud, coun­cil­lor in the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion, re­count­ed how the JA move­ment helped in her per­son­al de­vel­op­ment while at school. She wished the stu­dents the best for the fu­ture.

Danielle Ali, Form 4 stu­dent of Rio Claro East Sec­ondary and pres­i­dent of Stars com­pa­ny, said the ex­pe­ri­ence in JA was mo­ti­vat­ing. "The project has been chal­leng­ing but ex­cit­ing as well," said Ali.

"We have learnt the fun­da­men­tals of start­ing a busi­ness and how to be suc­cess­ful. We are de­ter­mined to sell all our prod­ucts to­day."

Stars is one of sev­en com­pa­nies coun­selled by bpTT which has part­nered with JA since the 1970s.

The oth­er com­pa­nies are Our Lim­it­ed Edi­tion, Dif­fer­ent Vy­bez, Graph­ic Styles, YOLO, Jusqu'a and New Gen­er­a­tion of Ed­u­cat­ed Achiev­ers.

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