Call for business to support YTC

SUPERINTENDENT of Prisons Germaine De Graff made a stirring appeal for corporate entities to partner with the Youth Training Centre (YTC) in its rehabilitative programmes.

Corporate interventions would result in not only a better future for the youth but for TT as a whole, De Graff said at the graduation ceremony for 36 YTC residents who successfully completed the Math is Fun course.

“Anybody who wants to become part of the YTC programme, call me. The more people we can get involved, more youths will be touched and more lives will be changed,” she said.

She praised energy company BPTT for its positive intervention through the annual BPTT Young Adult Mathematics is Fun experience.

“We offer our heartfelt thanks to BPTT for taking part in this rehabilitative initiative for our youths for the past three years. I am trying to get corporate citizens involved in what we are doing here. We can’t do it alone. If we get others to push our progress, this will be critical to our work with the young men and women. Yes, they made mistakes, but we cannot leave them alone,” De Graff said , said a media release.

Ronda Francis, corporate responsibility manager at BPTT and Andrew Cross, principal consultant, Cross & Associates, facilitators of the workshop, also addressed the audience at the YTC auditorium last Monday.

Explaining the objective of the math is fun, which is a seven-day, intensive math training course, Francis said that mathematics was essential as it is found in everything in everyday life. “I am sure that when you started this workshop, some of you felt you couldn’t do it but you stayed the course. Over the years graduates from this math camp have gone on to do well at examination level. I have great hope in you and I am confident that a number of you will follow the same path,” she told the graduates.

Cross, who advised the graduates to see their experience at YTC as an opportunity to correct the mistake they made, urged them to “stay the course until you succeed. Never give up!”

“You are very fortunate to enjoy this opportunity to get a second chance to do math. Mathematics will become even more relevant in our advancing technological world,” Cross added.

Now in its eighth year, the math workshop has been held at the YTC for the past three years. For the first time, two females were among the graduates who were all full of praise for the work done by tutor Nicole Lord.

The workshop is held in six centres in Port of Spain, Diego Martin, Belmont, YTC (Arouca), Mayaro and Tobago.