85 EPoS residents start Up Skill Me programme
A cohort of 85 East Port-of-Spain residents travelled to Woodford Lodge, Chaguanas, early yesterday for the orientation of the Up Skill Me programme.
Both the East Port-of-Spain Development Company (EPOS) and the National Energy Skills Centre (NESC) Technical Institute collaborated on the creation of the programme, which offers five hands-on courses.
Those courses include automotive services, automotive electrical & HVAC maintenance, heavy equipment operation, audio recording for video production, and air conditioning and refrigeration maintenance.
The contact hours range from 60 to 280 depending on the course.
EPOS chairman Hillan Morean told the 85 residents that the board was hopeful that they would complete the courses and warned them about fully participating in the activity.
“There are persons outside of this room right now who would have not made it into this room today and sadly, what we have recognised with some programmes is that people will start very strongly and for different reasons, they will fall off, some of them will fall off for the slackest of reasons,” Morean said.
Morean, who was the deputy mayor of Port-of-Spain from 2016 to 2023, said he was not chasing the cohort away but rather letting them know how seriously EPOS and NESC were taking their learning.
“We don’t just see this as an accomplishment for the company, this isn’t something that we going to boast to the ministry about to say we trained 85 people. We want to say that we developed 85 change makers in the communities in East Port-of-Spain,” he said.
The EPOS chairman told the cohort they were there to support them.
A 2022 graduate of the Up Skill Me programme, John Battersby, said he could attest to the seriousness of the activity. He praised his instructors for their persistence and patience.
“You see that man in the back they, Mr Rose, the instructor, he rough around the edges eh, but he’s a boss, he’s a general I tell you that. He take the time with we and he show we the thing boy,” Battersby said.
Battersby told the cohort sitting where he once was, that when he started he was “real shaky” but he said he and his 19 other participants applied themselves and were successful in the end.
He was valedictorian of the 2022 cohort and also won best operator.
“What I showing you is, I come out from where I come from, all of we come from different parts of the ghetto, but this is an opportunity for we to really apply we self and invest we self,” he said.
He told his 85 neighbours that the course could do a lot for their future.
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