With the gen­er­al aim to pro­mote ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and use of com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) for in­no­v­a­tive pur­suits, Mi­crosoft and The Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT) have en­tered in­to an agree­ment to help em­pow­er the na­tion's youth.This agree­ment will al­so pro­mote the lat­est use of tech­nol­o­gy and will re­ward and sup­port young tech­nol­o­gy in­no­va­tors.

The agree­ment will fa­cil­i­tate the ex­change of knowl­edge be­tween both par­ties to as­sist UTT in the de­vel­op­ment of its ICT tech­nol­o­gy ca­pac­i­ty among its stu­dents and young en­tre­pre­neurs, as a means of fos­ter­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of tech­ni­cal­ly in­no­v­a­tive T&T cit­i­zens.

In an ef­fort to in­crease the em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty and en­tre­pre­neur­ship of T&T's youth, Mi­crosoft and UTT will col­lab­o­rate to work with UTT's stu­dents and fa­cil­i­tate men­tor­ship and coach­ing through the Mi­crosoft BizS­park and Web­siteS­park pro­grammes.

These glob­al pro­grammes as­sist stu­dents and en­tre­pre­neurs by fa­cil­i­tat­ing ac­cess to Mi­crosoft soft­ware and de­vel­op­ment tools, and con­nect­ing them to a re­source pool of best prac­tices and sub­ject mat­ter ex­per­tise.

"As an en­tre­pre­neur­ial in­sti­tu­tion which is al­so the Na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, UTT's core com­mit­ment is to the de­vel­op­ment of the na­tion through ped­a­gog­i­cal, in­no­v­a­tive and en­tre­pre­neur­ial means. UTT's his­to­ry is steeped in Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy and we re­main ded­i­cat­ed to this en­deav­our de­spite hav­ing ex­pand­ed our range of pro­gramme of­fer­ings over the years.

"We see our ed­u­ca­tion­al man­date as es­sen­tial to the fu­ture of our na­tion, as we seek to ex­pand the ca­pa­bil­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty of our peo­ple," said Dr Fazal Ali, act­ing pres­i­dent and Provost, UT­TFrances Cor­reia, coun­try man­ag­er for Mi­crosoft T&T, East and South­ern Caribbean com­ment­ed: "Mi­crosoft is com­mit­ted to mak­ing a sus­tain­able im­pact for a bet­ter T&T. Pro­vid­ing this sup­port and work­ing di­rect­ly with UTT is just one way we help the peo­ple of T&T max­imise their full po­ten­tial and un­leash their cre­ativ­i­ty with the use of tech­nol­o­gy.

"By help­ing to em­pow­er lo­cal stu­dents and en­tre­pre­neurs and giv­ing them ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy re­sources, train­ing and soft­ware, we are en­abling them to have a brighter fu­ture, thus to­geth­er cre­at­ing a more in­no­v­a­tive T&T."A key fo­cus of this agree­ment will al­so be work­ing with up and com­ing de­vel­op­ers in T&T to sup­port and in­cen­tivise the de­vel­op­ment and de­ploy­ment of in­no­v­a­tive ap­pli­ca­tions and soft­ware so­lu­tions based on Mi­crosoft tech­nol­o­gy, such as the plat­forms of Win­dows 8, Win­dows Phone and Win­dows Azure.

The Mi­crosoft In­no­va­tion Cen­tre (MIC), which is part of this pro­pos­al, will be specif­i­cal­ly use­ful in as­sist­ing de­vel­op­ers, in­de­pen­dent soft­ware ven­dors, en­tre­pre­neurs, re­searchers and stu­dents to de­vel­op and de­ploy soft­ware so­lu­tions. The pro­posed MIC would be the first of its kind in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, and would serve as an in­cu­ba­tion cen­ter, in­spir­ing new gen­er­a­tions of pro­fes­sion­als and stu­dents to ap­ply their skills and cre­ativ­i­ty to ef­fect change.