Matthew Chin

Re­porter

matthew.chin@guardian.co.tt

Hun­dreds of youths from across T&T are part of this year’s Am­pli­fy, a mu­sic pro­duc­tion and life skills ini­tia­tive for young peo­ple cre­at­ed by the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice. This year’s edi­tion, in which ap­prox­i­mate­ly 450 young­sters will par­tic­i­pate, is in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of Trinidad & To­ba­go (COSTATT), for the first time.

In his fea­ture ad­dress to the au­di­ence at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice (MYNS) Fos­ter Cum­mings, spoke of the im­por­tance of sup­port­ing the cre­ative youth econ­o­my. But al­so crit­i­cised peo­ple in so­ci­ety com­plain­ing about the coun­try’s state of af­fairs, with­out do­ing any­thing to help it thrive.

“We have to in­vest in the youth. There are too many peo­ple sit­ting on the side­lines com­plain­ing about what the state of the coun­try is with­out wak­ing up and say­ing, ‘I am go­ing to do my part. I am go­ing to make a dif­fer­ence!’ “And you can start in your home: ‘I am go­ing to start pay­ing more at­ten­tion to my chil­dren, and their fu­ture!’” Cum­mings said.

“But many par­ents want to pass that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to some­body else. You know what is your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. You helped to bring them [here].” Tak­ing heed of the growth of the cre­ative in­dus­tries in the world, the pres­i­dent of COSTATT, Dr Kei­th Nurse, al­so echoed the sen­ti­ments of the min­is­ter that the youths of the na­tion must be in­vest­ed not on­ly in train­ing but in al­so en­sur­ing they have op­por­tu­ni­ties to utilise their skills so that the coun­try’s cre­ative and cul­tur­al spheres are cul­ti­vat­ed.

“... We have de­cid­ed to veer away from just train­ing for train­ing’s sake, our fo­cus through like our up­skilling acad­e­my as well a our soon to be de­vel­oped tech-hub is to cre­ate mech­a­nisms where­by your train­ing can lead to an in­cu­ba­tor for your ideas where you get busi­ness coach­ing,” Nurse said.

“The old mod­el of just train­ing peo­ple and pro­vid­ing a cer­tifi­cate is not suf­fi­cient any longer for the de­mands of the glob­al mar­ket­place.”

The au­di­ence was al­so en­ter­tained by singer, pro­duc­er, and per­form­ing artiste Rheon El­bourne, who sang his sin­gle, ‘Build My Dreams’. El­bourne shared with the crowd that he had been dream­ing of his fu­ture since he was a young boy and en­cour­aged young peo­ple to pur­sue theirs with courage.

“Get your mon­ey and build your dreams. Rep your city and fix your scheme …” El­bourne sang, be­fore be­ing met with a loud ap­plause. Min­is­ter Cum­mings an­nounced that one thou­sand grants, each val­ued at $20,000, will be dis­trib­uted by NED­CO an­nu­al­ly to youths need­ing help to start their own busi­ness­es.

How­ev­er, cer­tain pre­req­ui­sites must be met be­fore get­ting the jump­start to­wards ad­vanc­ing their dreams. “(NED­CO) is go­ing to help you de­vel­op a busi­ness plan. You’re go­ing to have to do two or three weeks of train­ing, they’re go­ing to pair you with a men­tor in a sim­i­lar type of busi­ness to help and coach you.

You’re go­ing to get busi­ness ad­vice,” Cum­mings said. Am­pli­fy is di­vid­ed in­to two sched­ules, A and B, which will see youths trained across COSTATT’s North, Cen­tral, and South cam­pus­es in the ar­eas of Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy, Graph­ic De­sign, Stage Pre­sen­ta­tion, and more.

Class­es un­der Sched­ule A run from to­mor­row to Ju­ly 26 and class­es un­der Sched­ule B run from Au­gust 12 to Sep­tem­ber 20.