WHILE school may help equip youths for the tasks they will have to complete in their jobs or careers, it usually does not prepare them for the world of work.
Isaiah Phillip, vice curator of Global Shapers Community, Port of Spain Hub, noted the disparity and spearheaded Unlocking Potential: Empowering Youths for A Brighter Future (UPtt), an initiative to equip forms five and six students with essential employability and entrepreneurial stills, nurturing their development for the evolving job market.
Phillip said UPtt came out of Global Shapers, a local NGO born out of the World Economic Forum. It is made up of people under the age of 30 working together to address social and environmental challenges locally, regionally and globally.
“One of the impact areas we wanted to focus on is reskilling for the future. And that is where the programme UPtt came from. We saw a gap between the knowledge students leave school with, and what employers require them to have.
[caption id="attachment_1095102" align="alignnone" width="1024"] UPtt participants using laptops supplied by SmartkidsTT to see how coding and AI is used in our everyday lives. - Photo courtesy UPtt[/caption]
“This gap is mostly felt by youths from underserved communities because they don't have access to the opportunities and resources other persons do, so we wanted to target underserved communities with the programme.”
Therefore, UPtt was engineered as a four-day programme which took place every Saturday in June for ten students of Diego Martin North Secondary School.
Phillip said Global Shapers had previously worked with Diego Martin North, so decided to give the students there the opportunity to be in the first cohort of the UPtt programme. The teachers chose students they believed had the potential to grow but were stymied due to their background or environment.
“We would have covered a range of topics that would help to bridge this gap between what they would have learned in school and what employers require, but also general life skills that could carry them throughout their entire lives.”
The workshops included collaboration and communication, digital literacy and the future of work, innovation and entrepreneurship, financial literacy, professional development and resume writing. And they covered topics like conflict resolution, leadership development and the benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence.
[caption id="attachment_1095100" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Logan Steuart, CEO of Bertie's Pepper Sauce, providing details on entrepreneurship and answering the questions of UPtt participants. - Photo courtesy UPtt.[/caption]
He said with the numerous videos of youths fighting which were circulating on social media in the past few years, they felt communication and conflict resolution was important. He said youths needed to know how to communicate in a respectful way that did not lead to escalation when they had differences with others.
“And we added innovation and entrepreneurship because, for most youths, working for o
