The re­gion needs more youth get­ting in­volved in tech­nol­o­gy in­no­va­tion and dig­i­tal en­tre­pre­neur­ship. That is the mes­sage be­ing de­liv­ered to young peo­ple at­tend­ing a spe­cial tech­nol­o­gy camp now un­der­way in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

"The great thing about mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy is that it gives every­one a re­al chance to im­prove their world," said Kevin Khelawan, Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer at Teleios Sys­tems, one of the largest in­de­pen­dent soft­ware de­vel­op­ment firms in the Caribbean.

Khelawan, the first per­son in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean to re­ceive the Mi­crosoft MVP (Most Valu­able Pro­fes­sion­al) award, was speak­ing at the Bright­Path Foun­da­tion Youth Tech Camp on the theme 'Iden­ti­ty Pow­er­ing Tech­nol­o­gy In­no­va­tion'.

Teleios is a dom­i­nant play­er in soft­ware de­vel­op­ment and mo­bile ser­vices in the Caribbean and is re­gard­ed as one of the re­gion's most in­no­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy firms. Draw­ing from his ex­pe­ri­ence of build­ing a team of lo­cal de­vel­op­ers and writ­ing award-win­ning soft­ware at Teleios, Khelawan told the au­di­ence that Caribbean young peo­ple have the ca­pac­i­ty to com­pete and in­no­vate on the glob­al stage.

"Our youth have a nat­ur­al affin­i­ty for tech­nol­o­gy, but in­no­va­tion is much more than sim­ply hav­ing a good idea. True in­no­va­tion in­volves mov­ing from idea to sus­tain­able so­lu­tion or prod­uct. This re­quires more than a cre­ative spark," he said.

He said, "The cur­rent ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem can put a squeeze on cre­ative ex­pres­sion and in­no­v­a­tive think­ing. That's why it is so im­por­tant to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties and out­lets for our youth to par­tic­i­pate in in­no­va­tion at an ear­ly age".

Khelawan cit­ed sev­er­al ex­am­ples of in­no­va­tion in ar­eas such as fash­ion, mu­sic, soft­ware and the de­sign of ser­vices start­ed by young peo­ple. He al­so en­cour­aged Caribbean youth to ex­plore op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­no­vate us­ing tech­nol­o­gy in the civic do­main by cre­at­ing so­lu­tions to help cit­i­zens par­tic­i­pate in com­mu­ni­ty and na­tion build­ing.

"To ful­fill your po­ten­tial to in­no­vate, you first need to be­lieve in your­self and be­lieve that your ideas have val­ue. The op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­no­va­tion are end­less," he said.

Teleios' Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Man­ag­er Loren­zo Hodges, who led par­tic­i­pants in an idea-cre­ation ex­er­cise at the camp, un­der­scored the im­por­tance of cre­at­ing so­lu­tions that ad­dress lo­cal needs.

Hodges en­cour­aged the par­tic­i­pants to, "Pay at­ten­tion to what's around you--your com­mu­ni­ty, your city, its needs, what can make it bet­ter--op­por­tu­ni­ties abound...The re­gion can ben­e­fit tremen­dous­ly from in­no­va­tion that im­proves peo­ple's lives and de­vel­ops their lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties."

The Youth Tech Camp is be­ing host­ed by Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, a Trinidad-based in­ter­na­tion­al not-prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tion. The event tar­gets youth be­tween 12 and 15 years old with an in­ter­est in busi­ness, in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, graph­ic de­sign, soft­ware pro­gram­ming, web de­vel­op­ment, mo­bile apps cre­ation. The au­di­ence in­clud­ed youth from the Caribbean, Unit­ed States and the UK.