PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Au­tomedics Au­to Ser­vice and Re­pair Cen­tre, Kee­gan Bar­row-Si­mon, has an­nounced plans to en­ter in­to part­ner­ship with MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy to men­tor youths to help them avoid trou­bled lives.

He made the an­nounce­ment at a spe­cial event held on Sun­day to cel­e­brate his com­pa­ny's ex­pan­sion in­to Mar­aval.

"MIC and Au­tomedics will be look­ing at a part­ner­ship where we can help men­tor, train, in­spire youths to do ex­cel­lent things with their lives. It hurts me every day to see a lot of young men go­ing astray know­ing ful­ly well how thin the line is that these gen­tle­men are about to cross and fa­cil­i­ties like MIC help move these guys back on­to the right path," said Bar­row, "I do be­lieve with our sup­port and our part­ner­ship with MIC we're go­ing to help a lot of young men de­vel­op them­selves and build ca­reers. So on be­half of Au­tomedics and MIC, we wel­come you guys."

Bar­row-Si­mon re­flect­ed up­on his time at the in­sti­tu­tion at an event at the com­pa­ny's new lo­ca­tion at Sad­dle Road, Mar­aval. The lo­ca­tion, the com­pa­ny's sec­ond ser­vice cen­tre, of­fi­cial­ly be­gan op­er­a­tions on yes­ter­day.

He ex­plained that he too was un­sure of his fu­ture un­til his moth­er en­rolled him in a pro­gramme at MIC, which ul­ti­mate­ly lead to him open­ing Au­tomedics' first lo­ca­tion in Freeport a decade ago.

"My mom told me I think here is re­al­ly go­ing to shape tal­ent that I see in you that you may not see in your­self as yet. That's ex­act­ly what hap­pened on that com­pound. Next four years I spent at MIC shaped me on the path that I took in both in­dus­tri­al and au­to me­chan­ic," he ex­plained.

Bar­row-Si­mon con­tin­ued, "I had a lot of friends who were in that class­room who were lost when we first start­ed, and we all left as men with skills, and to­day we can see in our eco­nom­ic cli­mate, aca­d­e­mics is great. Aca­d­e­mics is in­sur­ance for your life. Skills are the keys to your life. MIC with Au­tomedics, we are go­ing to en­sure that our young men and young women have all the sup­port they need."