Several disadvantaged young men and women are being given an opportunity to learn agricultural skills through the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago’s African Heritage Agricultural Centre Youth Project.
Executive Board Member of the Committee, Dr Asha Kambon, said ten youngsters, aged 16 to 22, participated in Cycle 1 of the nine-week programme, and all of them successfully graduated.
“Designed to empower young people through three things: agricultural training, personal development, and cultural grounding. We were very concerned that a lot of the young people who seem to find themselves drifting, drifting, are our children who have lost the cultural grounding because communities and families have lost the cultural grounding.”
Dr Kambon said the project is targeting a specific portion of this country’s young population, those who are “Not in Education, Employment or Training” (NEET).
“That is the group across the Caribbean that is in deep trouble, and unfortunately not like the ones in England who actually finish school, our NEET group, many of them have left school after Form 4, some before that, some have never seen secondary school, yeah. So it’s a group that has not been in an educational environment for a very long time.”
Dean of the University of the West Indies Faculty of Food and Agriculture, Professor Mark Wuddivira, noted that the project is turning lives around.
“You’re talking about nine students that would have been otherwise unemployable, but through this programme, of course, it has given them an opportunity to become employable. You are speaking about ten students that would have otherwise been doing other things that may not be, you know, well received that now have their lives transformed.”
First Citizens Trustee Services is sponsoring the programme, and General Manager Carver Trim said the group hopes the programme will achieve its stated goals.
“Our hope is that we will derive all the benefits that this programme promises: eating what we grow, helping to reduce our food import spend and driving environmental sustainability, just to name a few. However, just as critical for us is the measure of truly touching the lives of these young participants, positively and sustainably.”
The second cycle of the programme will also offer nine weeks of rigorous agricultural training to ten more young people.