Minister of Culture, Sports, and Youth, Stephen Lashley. (FP)

“We have an urgent need for a thirst for success and innovation.”

Minister with responsibility for Youth, Stephen Lashley, shared this view as he delivered the feature address at The Alexandra School’s awards ceremony at the school, Speightstown, St. Peter, this morning.

While encouraging the students to have a more “focused passion for success”, Mr. Lashley noted that providing innovations in technology should seriously be considered as a possible career path.

“We have become too dependent on the importation of certain technologies…. We too can be innovators; we have to somehow find a way to reverse our reliance on imported technology and seek to develop our own,” he urged.

The Youth Minister told the young persons gathered that they were the key to solving some of the nation’s problems.

“The solutions to the fundamental challenges facing Barbados must be had through reawakening in our young people a thirst for success, a longing to be innovators, and seeing themselves as being global entrepreneurs,” he insisted.

Adding that there were “no short cuts to success”, Mr. Lashley advised them not only to look to their Barbadian colleagues for inspiration, but also to those young people further afield.

“You have to begin to benchmark yourselves against your international competition… There are young people your age who … control corporate empires,” he pointed out.

Acknowledging that the road ahead would not always be easy, Mr. Lashley reminded the students that they needed to be very focused as they sought to achieve success.

jamal.weekes@barbados.gov.bb

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