When Nicole Kalloo dis­cov­ered she was be­ing over­charged by the elec­tri­cians hired to build-out her bak­ery, she did not sim­ply suc­cumb to the frus­tra­tion of the mo­ment or set­tle for a fi­nan­cial loss.

In­stead, she chose to trans­form her in­dig­na­tion in­to a pow­er­ful mis­sion for self-re­liance and pro­fes­sion­al mas­tery.

Dri­ven by a per­va­sive lack of trans­paren­cy with­in the lo­cal con­tract­ing in­dus­try, Kalloo, a pas­try chef, com­mit­ted her­self to learn­ing the trade from the ground up to en­sure her busi­ness in­ter­ests and her fi­nances would nev­er be com­pro­mised by preda­to­ry prac­tices again.

This per­son­al dri­ve for au­ton­o­my led Kalloo to seek out for­mal ed­u­ca­tion, even­tu­al­ly find­ing the per­fect out­let for her am­bi­tions through a spe­cialised train­ing ini­tia­tive.

“I was ripped off by elec­tri­cians who were do­ing the build-out, and I de­cid­ed I want­ed to know every as­pect of what a build-out en­tails. That is why I signed up,” Kalloo, a for­mer flight at­ten­dant, clothes store own­er and mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tive ex­plained.

She is one of 30 trainees who re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed their grad­u­a­tion from “Wired for Suc­cess,” a cus­tomised nine-week elec­tri­cal pro­gramme, ex­e­cut­ed through a strate­gic col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the NESC Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute (NESC-TI) and the House of An­gos­tu­ra.

It marked An­gos­tu­ra’s in­au­gur­al par­tic­i­pa­tion, pro­vid­ing full fund­ing to en­sure that fi­nan­cial bar­ri­ers did not pre­vent ca­pa­ble in­di­vid­u­als from ac­cess­ing high-qual­i­ty tech­ni­cal ed­u­ca­tion.

By re­mov­ing the bur­den of tu­ition, the part­ner­ship de­moc­ra­tised ac­cess to spe­cialised skills that are of­ten locked be­hind ex­pen­sive pri­vate cer­ti­fi­ca­tions.

Cen­tral to the suc­cess of this ini­tia­tive was a cur­ricu­lum de­signed to be both com­pre­hen­sive and high­ly prac­ti­cal for the mod­ern econ­o­my.

It fo­cused on:

*Res­i­den­tial elec­tri­cal in­stal­la­tion: Mas­ter­ing the fun­da­men­tals of home wiring;

*Com­mer­cial ap­pli­ca­tions: Un­der­stand­ing the com­plex pow­er needs of busi­ness en­vi­ron­ments; and

*Pro­fes­sion­al cer­ti­fi­ca­tion: Grad­u­ates re­ceived NESC-TI cer­ti­fi­ca­tion aligned with Caribbean Vo­ca­tion­al Qual­i­fi­ca­tions (CVQ).

They al­so ben­e­fit­ted from an ex­pand­ed cur­ricu­lum that in­tro­duced them to foun­da­tion­al knowl­edge of split­ter units used in apart­ment and mul­ti-unit build­ings—giv­ing trainees a com­pet­i­tive edge as they en­ter the work­force.

The im­pact of this rig­or­ous train­ing was pal­pa­ble at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny held at the House of An­gos­tu­ra in Laven­tille on De­cem­ber 17, where Kalloo re­flect­ed on how the ex­pe­ri­ence fun­da­men­tal­ly shift­ed her per­spec­tive.

“This has been a very en­rich­ing ex­pe­ri­ence,” Kalloo told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian. “I ac­tu­al­ly want to go fur­ther in know­ing oth­er as­pects of the trade.”

Her sto­ry re­flects on the val­ue of tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al train­ing and the im­por­tance of cor­po­rate-fund­ed com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment in cre­at­ing a more skilled and em­pow­ered work­force.

For fel­low grad­u­ate Ja­son Tees­dale, the com­ple­tion of the pro­gramme rep­re­sent­ed some­thing far more sig­nif­i­cant than a mere cer­tifi­cate; it was a de­fin­i­tive turn­ing point in a life pre­vi­ous­ly hin­dered by sys­temic ob­sta­cles.

He viewed the grad­u­a­tion as a mo­ment where the bar­ri­ers that had long held him back were fi­nal­ly dis­man­tled, al­low­ing him to re­claim a sense of agency over his pro­fes­sion­al fu­ture.

“De­spite hav­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, lack of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion lim­it­ed my abil­i­ty to ad­vance and it has been right­ly said that cer­ti­fi­ca­tion builds con­fi­dence and cred­i­bil­i­ty in any field. In the past, I faced re­al chal­lenges with ed­u­ca­tion in­clud­ing lim­it­ed fi­nances and sup­port and en­cour­age­ment. I hard­ly had that,” Tees­dale re­flect­ed.

He em­pha­sised that while raw tal­ent and skill are es­sen­tial, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is the “key” to de­liv­er­ing pro­fes­sion­al re­sults, stress­ing that it bridges the gap be­tween tal­ent and recog­nised ex­per­tise, al­low­ing pro­fes­sion­als to nav­i­gate the mar­ket­place with au­thor­i­ty.

“This pro­gramme has made it pos­si­ble for me to for­mal­ly ap­ply my skills and move for­ward with con­fi­dence and pur­pose,” Tees­dale added.

The broad­er im­pli­ca­tions of these in­di­vid­ual suc­cess­es were echoed by Kern Dass, pres­i­dent of NESC-TI, who cham­pi­oned the ini­tia­tive as a bench­mark for what could be achieved when in­dus­try lead­ers and ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions align their goals

Dass un­der­scored the fact that the pro­gramme’s suc­cess is in­trin­si­cal­ly linked to the in­volve­ment of cor­po­rate part­ners like An­gos­tu­ra.

He ar­gued that with­out such sub­stan­tial cor­po­rate back­ing, NESC-TI’s abil­i­ty to de­liv­er high-lev­el tech­ni­cal train­ing to un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly ham­pered, leav­ing a gap in the na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment of hu­man cap­i­tal.

By clos­ing the gap be­tween the class­room and the ac­tu­al needs of the work­force, these types of part­ner­ships en­sure that tech­ni­cal in­sti­tu­tions re­main at the cut­ting edge of ex­cel­lence.

Dass al­so high­light­ed the in­tense com­pet­i­tive­ness of the pro­gramme, re­veal­ing that out of over 600 ea­ger ap­pli­cants, on­ly 30 were se­lect­ed for the fi­nal co­hort.

He urged the grad­u­ates to recog­nise their “priv­i­leged and cho­sen” sta­tus as mem­bers of the top five per cent of ap­pli­cants, sug­gest­ing that this se­lec­tiv­i­ty car­ries a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to utilise their new skills for the bet­ter­ment of the wider so­ci­ety.

The path from grad­u­a­tion to em­ploy­ment was made even more di­rect for five of the top-per­form­ing stu­dents, who were se­lect­ed for two months of in­ten­sive on-the-job train­ing at An­gos­tu­ra start­ing in Jan­u­ary 2026.

This vi­sion of in­te­grat­ed train­ing and em­ploy­ment was fur­ther ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Gary Hunt, Chair­man of An­gos­tu­ra Hold­ings Ltd, who linked the pro­gramme di­rect­ly to the com­pa­ny’s broad­er busi­ness mod­el.

Hunt em­pha­sised that youth em­pow­er­ment and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment are not just char­i­ta­ble acts but are es­sen­tial com­po­nents of a sus­tain­able cor­po­rate strat­e­gy.

“It is part of our cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to give back and to play a mean­ing­ful role in so­ci­ety. This is so­ci­ety we earn our prof­its and well-be­ing from so we need to give back in var­i­ous ar­eas. How­ev­er that is now tar­get­ted in cer­tain ar­eas, and we want it to be ar­eas that are rel­e­vant to our busi­ness mod­el. We are al­ways in need of elec­tri­cians, we are al­ways in need of chemists, we are al­ways in need of en­gi­neers, ad­min­is­tra­tors, mar­ket­ing, sales, so we want to re­strict our­selves to those things that will be rel­e­vant at some point to the op­er­a­tion of the com­pa­ny in the fu­ture, so that we can do more than just train you. We can in the fu­ture hire you... Em­pow­er­ing peo­ple is very, very im­por­tant in our econ­o­my, and this goes to­wards stim­u­lat­ing the econ­o­my from our per­spec­tive,” Hunt stat­ed.

He added the aim is to pro­vide re­al-world, job-ready skills that open doors, adding that through pro­grammes like “Wired for Suc­cess,” par­tic­i­pants have not on­ly built tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ty but have al­so de­vel­oped re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, con­fi­dence and the pro­fes­sion­al readi­ness need­ed to suc­ceed in a grow­ing field.

Through pro­grammes like “Wired for Suc­cess,” par­tic­i­pants have done more than just ac­quire tech­ni­cal ca­pa­bil­i­ties; they have de­vel­oped the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and con­fi­dence re­quired to nav­i­gate the mod­ern world.