JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Republic Bank’s apprentices graduate

by

Curtis Williams
2227 days ago
20190619
Anna-María García-Brooks, General Manager, Group Human Resources and Hilton Hyland, General Manager, Commercial and Retail Banking with the Youth Link Apprenticeship Programme Class of 2019.

Anna-María García-Brooks, General Manager, Group Human Resources and Hilton Hyland, General Manager, Commercial and Retail Banking with the Youth Link Apprenticeship Programme Class of 2019.

An­na-María Gar­cía-Brooks, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Group Hu­man Re­sources, Re­pub­lic Bank ad­vised re­cent grad­u­ates of the Youth Link Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme to em­brace all of life’s op­por­tu­ni­ties, even those which are chal­leng­ing.

This, she added, was key in build­ing a bet­ter so­ci­ety.

She was speak­ing at the 33rd grad­u­at­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the pro­gramme re­cent­ly held at the bank’s head of­fice at Park Street, Port-of -Spain.

Since its in­cep­tion in 1986, the pro­gramme has helped hun­dreds of young peo­ple bridge the gap be­tween sec­ondary school and the world of work by pro­vid­ing them with valu­able work ex­pe­ri­ence and op­por­tu­ni­ties for per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment.

This year, 40 sec­ondary school grad­u­ates be­tween the ages of 16 to 19 par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­gramme.

Over a sev­en-month pe­ri­od, they were as­signed to var­i­ous branch­es across the bank’s net­work and were en­gaged in a range of cours­es in­clud­ing of­fice pro­ce­dures, per­son­al de­vel­op­ment, bank­ing op­er­a­tions, cus­tomer ser­vice and fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy.

Gar­cía-Brooks who al­so ad­vised the grad­u­ates to recog­nise that their de­ci­sions and ac­tions con­trol their des­tiny added, “Every de­ci­sion is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to em­brace change, to set a new path.”

Thank­ing the bank for em­brac­ing youths and pro­vid­ing in­valu­able train­ing, vale­dic­to­ri­ans, Je­re­mi­ah Gibbs-Clarke and Arielle Forde, said they were con­fi­dent about what lies in store re­gard­ing the world of work.

Gibbs-Clarke and Forde were joined by three oth­er spe­cial awardees who were recog­nised for ex­celling in dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the pro­gramme.

Sha­nia Pe­ters was giv­en the award for Best Busi­ness Plan, Jo An­ndra Ot­t­ley was ac­knowl­edged as the Most Im­proved ap­pren­tice and Jer­von Jack was recog­nised for be­ing the Most Out­stand­ing ap­pren­tice over­all.

Re­pub­lic Bank’s Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Der­win How­ell who al­so com­mend­ed the grad­u­ates for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion not­ed, “Youth Link is about so much more than build­ing work ex­pe­ri­ence.

“It’s al­so about build­ing in­di­vid­u­als. Not just any in­di­vid­u­als, but in­di­vid­u­als who will one day be lead­ers of our so­ci­ety.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored