FACILITATORS and tutors of the Board of Industrial Training (BIT), across the country, are benefitting from training to improve their delivery of health and wellness information to trainees following the launch on Tuesday of a three-day Comprehensive Healthcare and Wellness Workshop.

The workshop, being held at Duke Lodge, Kingston, is made possible through a collaboration between the BIT and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The facilitators will be educated on mental and emotional health, sexual and gender violence, personal care, self and interpersonal relationships, and others.

Richard Maughn, Chief Executive Officer of BIT, spoke briefly on the relevance of this programme, which attempts to re-expose facilitators to current health and
wellness information needed to teach their respective trainees adequately.

Further, he said it also supplements the agency’s 2020 shift to broaden the coverage of health categories like mental and physical health, among other aspects, via an online platform.

Maughn stated that the project is linked to the agency’s goal of developing skilled workers who can successfully integrate into the workplace. To that end, he promised that similar workshops would be held in the future because of this collaboration.

Adler Bynoe, Liaison Officer at UNFPA, presented briefly on the agency’s journey since 2008, when it began collaborating with numerous vocational and technical schools to integrate healthcare and wellness subjects into their respective curricula. The workshop is one of several initiatives completed by the agency to provide facilitators, tutors, and the necessary expertise to share.

Also present at the workshop was UNFPA’s Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) Co-ordinator, Babsie Giddings.