Rapheal John-Lall

The launch of a So­cial In­no­va­tion Lab at the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness will as­sist young peo­ple to find eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties, Catali­na Her­rera Ro­ca, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and coun­try of­fi­cer at Citibank said yes­ter­day.

"With­in the Citi Foun­da­tion, this project is aligned to pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for our youths to ef­fec­tive­ly com­pete for eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties and suc­ceed in the 21st cen­tu­ry econ­o­my. These young peo­ple will re­quire a mix of ed­u­ca­tion, em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and lead­er­ship skills.

"The Citi Foun­da­tion is fo­cused on pro­grammes that help young peo­ple to link ed­u­ca­tion goals with lead­er­ship skills, train­ing, pro­fes­sion­al net­works and the en­try way to em­ploy­ment.

There­fore we are high­ly in­ter­est­ed in the So­cial In­no­va­tion Lab Project," she said.

Her­rera spoke at a cer­e­mo­ny for the hand­ing over of a cheque of US$70,000 to the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School for the launch of the project at the Arthur Lok Jack School, Mt Hope.

Com­ment­ing on the project she said: "A so­cial in­no­va­tion lab takes an ex­per­i­men­tal and col­lab­o­ra­tive ap­proach to gen­er­at­ing so­lu­tions for so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges. This is part of an emerg­ing glob­al field of labs for so­cial ben­e­fit.

"Labs have emerged in re­sponse to our grow­ing need to find new process­es to sup­port peo­ple in gov­ern­ment, civ­il so­ci­ety, and the pri­vate sec­tor as they search for break­through so­lu­tions to se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic, so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lems. They come in dif­fer­ent forms , but most strive to of­fer a place for cre­ative, cross sec­tor and cross dis­ci­pli­nary de­ci­sion mak­ing and in­no­va­tion.'

Her­rera said the project is one of the first of its kind for T&T and she is in­ter­est­ed to see over time the in­crease in the num­ber of low in­come young peo­ple who com­plete post sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion, gain skills to en­hance em­ploy­a­bil­i­ty, be­come em­ployed, or start their in­come gen­er­a­tion busi­ness.

She added that this is the sec­ond time Citi Foun­da­tion has part­nered with the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) and the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School. The first was a year ago when the Sus­tain­able and Re­new­able En­er­gy Busi­ness In­cu­ba­tor was launched.