AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

In the span of six months, Mer­cedez Milling­ton evolved from an in­tro­vert at the St Jude’s School for Girls to now con­sid­er­ing a fu­ture in broad­cast jour­nal­ism. Milling­ton was one of 30 peo­ple, most­ly mi­nors, from var­i­ous chil­dren’s homes who grad­u­at­ed from the in­au­gur­al Train­ing for Self Suf­fi­cien­cy pro­gramme spear­head­ed by the Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Di­vi­sion.

The chil­dren from the St Jude’s School for Girls, the Is­lam­ic Home for Chil­dren, Haven on Hope, Cre­do Foun­da­tion for Jus­tice-Sophia House and the Cre­do Drop-in & De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre re­ceived Lev­el One cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in Bar­ber­ing, Gen­er­al Cook­ing, Pho­tog­ra­phy and Ra­dio and Tele­vi­sion Broad­cast­ing.

Speak­ing at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Radis­son Ho­tel on Wednes­day, Milling­ton, the sole grad­uand from the ra­dio and tele­vi­sion course, ex­plained to Guardian Me­dia how the pro­gramme im­pact­ed her.

“It sound­ed bor­ing at first but af­ter a while I en­joyed in­ter­act­ing with the dif­fer­ent tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ties, get­ting to go in­to the stu­dios. I feel re­al­ly dif­fer­ent. I can ex­press my­self more. Even when I was in the home there were times I would be shy, I wouldn’t want to be out there when we leave the home but now, I feel I can be broad­cast­ed all over the world,” Milling­ton said.

Milling­ton, now over the age of 18, has aged out of the home. The oth­er grad­uands’ iden­ti­ties have to be with­held as they are still mi­nors and wards of the State.

Speak­ing at the event, the Min­is­ter with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Child and Gen­der Af­fairs, Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy com­mend­ed the chil­dren for tak­ing part in the train­ing pro­gramme and hailed them as trail­blaz­ers.

“When I look at you, I see the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go, I see the po­ten­tial for our na­tion to be great and achieve great­ness. I see in you a hope for a brighter to­mor­row,” Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy said to the grad­uands.

Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy al­so ac­knowl­edged the spe­cial hur­dles that these chil­dren faced dur­ing the pro­gramme.

“You would have start­ed with some lev­el of dis­ad­van­tage, that some oth­er chil­dren would have had to en­dure but nev­er­the­less you all still have the abil­i­ty to do great things,” the min­is­ter said.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly urged them to make the most of the op­por­tu­ni­ty giv­en to them.

“Make sure you do that, be­cause in tak­ing ad­van­tage of it you will be ben­e­fit­ting your­self and you’ll be mak­ing good of the in­vest­ment that this coun­try wants to make in you, we are very in­vest­ed in mak­ing sure you suc­ceed. Our coun­try is re­plete with op­por­tu­ni­ties for first, sec­ond and fourth chances,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said to the au­di­ence.

Mo­ti­va­tion speak­er Tia­Marie Lan­der a gen­der-based vi­o­lence ad­vo­cate spoke of her child­hood jour­ney from adop­tion to aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess at the pres­ti­gious Brown Uni­ver­si­ty. She told the young­sters that im­pos­si­ble is not a bar­ri­er.

“Re­mem­ber that you are not de­fined by the cir­cum­stances of the past or by the mis­takes of oth­ers, but by the mo­ment you chose to stand tall, which in your case is this very mo­ment,” Lan­der said.

The Train­ing for Self Suf­fi­cien­cy pro­gramme was sup­port­ed by Ac­cess Me­dia Acad­e­my, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Open Cam­pus, the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Child Pro­tec­tion and var­i­ous me­dia per­son­al­i­ties in­clu­sive of sev­er­al mem­bers of the Guardian news­room.