Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, Technological and Vocational Training, Sandra Husbands, has expressed support for the launch of the satellite programme between the Samuel Jackman Prescod Institute of Technology (SJPI) and Pinelands Creative Workshop (PCW).
In her address on Monday in the Media Resource Centre at the SJPI, Ms. Husbands stated: “We are very supportive of any arrangements that seek to form partnerships, collaborations, or to facilitate improvement in business and social practices to increase our capacity to achieve world class status.”
Minister Husbands continued: “I cannot express to you how happy I am that such a programme is going to be executed in Barbados to help our children or young people who have not been able to get a chance to improve their lives.”
She added that the programme was formulated to facilitate inclusive training and learning development in communities, and pointed out that it is an important initiative that seeks to increase the skill set of persons within the society.
The Minister further explained that the Ministry supports the partnership because of the focus on education transformation.
“We cannot have 40 per cent of our children leaving school without some form of certification. It is not sustainable; and what that means for us, is that right now, we are working assiduously on developing a programme for transformation. We’re looking at designing the pathway; designing the curriculum to change what we’re teaching our children and how we teach them.”
Ms. Husbands also emphasised that she sees the partnership between the SJPI and the PCW as a commitment, a collaboration, and a volunteerism to work together to provide an escape hatch for young people, and said it is “an exit from a life of going nowhere, to a life where they can dream, where they imagine what they want their lives to be like and have the opportunity to actually create that life”.
Ms. Husbands likened the lives of the nation’s youth to seeds. She said: “One of the things that is often missing from our training of children is helping them to understand their potential exists in seed form, so if you look at a tree, a big tree, where does that come from? A tiny seed. But what happens as you water it, as you care it, that tree, the potential in that seed will break out and produce a massive tree that will produce continual fruit to create other trees.
“That is what each of our children are, a seed, that we have a responsibility to water. We have a responsibility to nurture and support, so that they can develop and become powerful trees in our nation.”
She also noted that there is a lot of work to be done for true transformation to take place in an effort to move the country forward, and encouraged those gathered to put their “hand to the plough”.