Grena­da will be the first Caribbean coun­try to ben­e­fit from a tech­nol­o­gy train­ing ini­tia­tive de­signed to train com­mu­ni­ties to take ad­van­tage of In­ter­net, mo­bile and com­put­er tech­nolo­gies.

Tech­Link, an ini­tia­tive of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion, is staged in part­ner­ship with Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. The pro­gramme is de­signed en­cour­age par­tic­i­pants to ap­ply their knowl­edge to in­no­v­a­tive­ly ad­dress lo­cal needs.

Rhea Yaw Ching, cor­po­rate vice pres­i­dent of sales and mar­ket­ing at Colum­bus, said the com­pa­ny "sees its sup­port of Tech­Link as an im­por­tant state­ment of how se­ri­ous and com­mit­ted we are to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ing the com­mu­ni­ties in which we do busi­ness".

The pro­gramme com­pris­es a se­ries of hands-on work­shops and train­ing sem­i­nars that specif­i­cal­ly tar­get young peo­ple, women, en­tre­pre­neurs and small busi­ness own­ers. Over the next sev­er­al months, the pro­gramme will ex­pand across the re­gion with ini­tia­tives tar­get­ing par­ents, se­niors, and even young chil­dren.

"At the end of the day, it is im­per­a­tive that we all work to­geth­er to en­sure that the Caribbean stays ahead of the curve with re­gard to adapt­ing tech­nol­o­gy for our ben­e­fit and the growth of the re­gion," said­Bevil Wood­ing, Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path Foun­da­tion.

"We are grate­ful to have the sup­port of Colum­bus for this ex­cit­ing ini­tia­tive. I am con­fi­dent that to­geth­er, we can fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of more dig­i­tal con­tent and Caribbean in­no­va­tion."

The pro­gramme will kick off in St Georges at the Grena­da Boys Sec­ondary School on No­vem­ber 9th with a for­mal launch sched­uled for No­vem­ber 23rd. Gre­go­ry Bowen, Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Works, Phys­i­cal De­vel­op­ment, Pub­lic Util­i­ties & ICT, has been in­vit­ed to de­liv­er the fea­ture ad­dress at the open­ing.

Through the Colum­bus and Bright­Path part­ner­ship, the Tech­Link ini­tia­tive will be rolled out through­out the Caribbean to en­cour­age young peo­ple, par­ents, ed­u­ca­tors, small busi­ness own­ers, and oth­er groups in­ter­est­ed in tech­nol­o­gy-en­abled in­no­va­tion to deep­en their skills, de­vel­op more lo­cal dig­i­tal con­tent and ex­ploit new op­por­tu­ni­ties.