A MAJOR debt of gratitude is owed to people who are change-makers in their communities. It’s even more heartening when those change-makers are young people working to transform their communities. This is the story of 22-year-old Dwright Ward who recently launched a Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) workshop in his home village of Buxton. The programme is targeted to out-of-school youths and unemployed youths.

This newspaper featured Ward just a few days ago. The young change-maker formed a partnership with the Ministry of Labour’s Board of Industrial Training (BIT) to connect others like him with the skills they needed to excel.

In his own words: “I came up with this initiative by seeing persons like myself dropping out of school, walking the road, loitering, not doing anything with their life [sic]…

“I wanted to find a solution to this, and I wanted to reach out to these persons… I thought of different ways I can get these people involved in training… Skill is wealth and with skill today, you are being [sic] able to earn as much as possible; when you have a skill no one can take that away from you, especially when you are certified in that skill.”

The thrust towards TVET in Guyana is aggressive. In January, this newspaper reported that $3.6 billion was budgeted in the national budget for improving TVET. $2.5 billion of that sum was for improving TVET programmes at the post-secondary level, the January report said.

Only in August, the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC®), Guyana’s Education Ministry, and the Council for Technical Vocational Education and Training (CTVET) hosted a post-stakeholder meeting after concluding the assessment of 34 secondary schools about offering the Caribbean Vocational Qualification (CVQ) here.

At a more community-level, Dolphin Secondary School in South Georgetown recently benefitted from an upgrade to its technical and home economics laboratories. As far as CVQ is concerned, the school already offers Agricultural Science, Commercial Food Production, and Furniture- Making.

In his budget presentation, the Senior Minister for finance, Dr Ashni Singh outlined the overall value of TVET to Guyana’s development thrust. “Government has identified human capital development through technical and vocational skills as one of the critical impetuses for our development agenda. Guyana’s rapid development trajectory requires a skilled, qualified and innovative population, capable of meeting the needs of our labour market….

“Altogether, these technical vocational skills training will result in almost 10,000 persons being available to enter the job market during 2022, and the government will be focusing on ensuring that trainees are gainfully employed,” Dr Singh had noted.

Young people like Mr Ward are rightly taking advantage of the opportunities placed before them in a changing Guyana. Even better, they are working to connect their communities with those opportunities. It’s truly about ensuring that you leave the door open for others, once you make it through.