On Feb­ru­ary 25, Ni­herst launched the Im­prov­ing In­no­va­tion Ca­pac­i­ties in the Caribbean (In­vo­cab) Project at the Rudranath Capildeo Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre, Cou­va.

The aim of the project is to pro­mote Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and In­no­va­tion (STI) in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in T&T and Ja­maica, with the ul­ti­mate goal of de­vel­op­ing crit­i­cal and in­no­v­a­tive think­ing and prob­lem-solv­ing abil­i­ties in school­child­ren, a re­lease said.

In­vo­cab is a joint ini­tia­tive of Ni­herst, the Ja­maica-based Sci­en­tif­ic Re­search Coun­cil (SRC) and the Tech­nis­che Uni­ver­sit�t Dres­den of Dres­den, Ger­many. It will be im­ple­ment­ed over the course of three years in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion in T&T and Ja­maica, the Mi­co Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege (Ja­maica), Church Teach­ers' Col­lege (Ja­maica), the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy (Ja­maica), as well as with in­put from oth­er stake­hold­ers.

The project is be­ing pi­lot­ed lo­cal­ly in four pri­ma­ry schools�San­ta Rosa Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, Mal­abar Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry, Bon Air Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry and St Do­minic's Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry as well as four sec­ondary schools�San Juan North Sec­ondary, St Joseph's Col­lege, St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary and El Do­ra­do Sec­ondary.

Prin­ci­pals, teach­ers and stu­dents from these schools who at­tend­ed the launch ea­ger­ly pre­viewed the sci­ence kits that will soon be avail­able at their re­spec­tive schools.

The need for In­vo­cab stems from the need to de­vel­op in T&T an ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem that sup­ports in­no­va­tion. This can on­ly be pos­si­ble through im­prove­ments in ed­u­ca­tion in­fra­struc­tures, teach­ers' com­pe­ten­cies, sci­ence cen­tres, sci­ence-based events and ed­u­ca­tion poli­cies. Such an in­no­v­a­tive sys­tem would, in turn, al­low Trinidad and To­ba­go to be­come more com­pet­i­tive glob­al­ly and aid its trans­for­ma­tion in­to a di­ver­si­fied, knowl­edge-in­ten­sive econ­o­my plac­ing among the top rank­ing coun­tries in the Glob­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship Mon­i­tor as well as the Glob­al In­no­va­tion In­dex, where un­for­tu­nate­ly to­day the coun­try still ranks low.

In her wel­come ad­dress, act­ing pres­i­dent of Ni­herst, Joyce­lyn Lee Young re­mind­ed the young peo­ple in the au­di­ence of the per­va­sive role of sci­ence and the ap­pli­ca­tion of sci­ence through tech­nol­o­gy in trans­form­ing so­ci­ety and hu­man ex­is­tence. She said T&T need­ed to be more, "in­no­v­a­tive and strate­gic in the use of our re­sources to stay com­pet­i­tive at a glob­al lev­el. Oc­cu­pa­tions in Stem-re­lat­ed (sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics) ca­reers are some of the fastest grow­ing and best paid of the 21st cen­tu­ry, and they of­ten have the great­est po­ten­tial for job growth, and for brain drain. It is im­por­tant that TT trains enough of our youth to pur­sue Stem sub­jects and ca­reers. It is im­por­tant there­fore that we in­stil and main­tain stu­dent in­ter­est in Stem and en­sure that they en­ter the work force with suf­fi­cient knowl­edge to make worth­while con­tri­bu­tions to our Stem in­dus­tries."

Giv­en the cen­tral role teach­ers play in ad­vanc­ing Stem ed­u­ca­tion, Ms Lee Young con­sid­ered In­vo­cab to be a nec­es­sary and time­ly ini­tia­tive for help­ing teach­ers in­spire and mo­ti­vate their stu­dents by mak­ing Stem learn­ing in schools more en­gag­ing.

Speak­ing on be­half of the Del­e­ga­tion of the EU to T&T was pro­gramme of­fi­cer Kathrin Ren­ner, who stat­ed that the Eu­ro­pean Union has pledged close to $7 mil­lion to­wards this project un­der the Africa Caribbean Pa­cif­ic (ACP) Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Pro­gramme, as part of its mis­sion to as­sist T&T to mod­ernise and di­ver­si­fy its eco­nom­ic base through in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy.

Ren­ner al­so stat­ed that: "The EU is very proud to play a ma­jor part in the im­prove­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go's busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment through in­no­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy. We have been do­ing so since 2011 though sev­er­al EU grants in­clud­ing for the de­vel­op­ment of an In­te­grat­ed Busi­ness In­cu­ba­tor Sys­tem; for pro­grammes aimed at strength­en­ing the de­vel­op­ment of non-en­er­gy clus­ters and for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in the af­ter­math of the clo­sure of the sug­ar in­dus­try. The lat­ter is aimed at fos­ter­ing in­no­va­tion in a sec­tor that cur­rent­ly re­lies too heav­i­ly on tra­di­tion­al meth­ods."

She added, "The log­ic be­hind all these pro­grammes is to sup­port the gov­ern­ment to pro­vide a bet­ter pol­i­cy and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for busi­ness­es, to mod­ernise busi­ness sup­port ser­vices, to be more trans­par­ent and to in­crease ac­count­abil­i­ty."

Look­ing ahead, the EU re­mains com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing T&T in the de­vel­op­ment of a sus­tain­able, com­pet­i­tive and in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment. Such as­sis­tance will be through the pro­vi­sion of fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to:

�2 Im­prove the gov­er­nance struc­tures for in­no­va­tion

�2 De­vel­op stronger non-en­er­gy clus­ters

�2 In­crease re­search ac­tiv­i­ty and cre­ate stronger links be­tween acad­e­mia and the pro­duc­tive sec­tor, and,

�2 Iden­ti­fy ways of at­tract­ing and nur­tur­ing fi­nanc­ing for in­no­va­tion.