Forty busi­ness stu­dents from two schools in east Trinidad–Ma­yaro Sec­ondary and Rio Claro East Sec­ondary–have re­ceived a time­ly in­cen­tive to en­ter the world of busi­ness through a skills de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme im­ple­ment­ed by the Ma­yaro Ini­tia­tive for Pri­vate En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment (MIPED).

The mix of Form Four and Five stu­dents re­ceived a step-by-step in­struc­tion in the cre­ation of a busi­ness plan de­liv­ered by ex­pe­ri­enced tu­tors from the Youth Train­ing and Em­ploy­ment Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (YTEPP), who are part­ner­ing with MIPED on this in­no­v­a­tive project.

Kevin Weekes, a Form Four stu­dent at Rio Claro East Sec­ondary, wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty.

"This train­ing was very help­ful and we re­al­ly learnt a lot," Weekes said in a re­lease.

"It made the class­room learn­ing come alive be­cause we got to un­der­stand the plan­ning of a busi­ness from the ground up.

The tu­tors were ex­cel­lent and gave us a prac­ti­cal un­der­stand­ing of the syl­labus.

"I was think­ing about open­ing my own busi­ness when I com­plete my stud­ies, and with this train­ing I now have a def­i­nite ad­van­tage."

Start­ed by en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2002 with a seed fund of $7 mil­lion, MIPED fa­cil­i­tates the de­vel­op­ment of small busi­ness en­tre­pre­neurs and con­tributes to the de­vel­op­ment of the south-east­ern com­mu­ni­ty by pro­vid­ing a com­bi­na­tion of fi­nan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to in­ter­est­ed per­sons.

To date, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has in­vest­ed over $45 mil­lion and cre­at­ed over 2,000 per­ma­nent and 4,000 tem­po­rary jobs.

Ron­da Fran­cis, Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty Man­ag­er, bpTT, and Di­rec­tor on MIPED's Board, was en­thu­si­as­tic about the part­ner­ship with YTEPP: "One of the key as­pects of our in­vest­ments in the com­mu­ni­ty and young peo­ple is in the area of ed­u­ca­tion.

"This will serve to en­er­gise the next gen­er­a­tion of mi­cro-en­tre­pre­neurs in the south east­ern com­mu­ni­ty and MIPED will be there to sup­port them fur­ther when they are ready to get in­to busi­ness."

Each school chose a busi­ness idea, rang­ing from boun­cy cas­tle rental to a bak­ery, and ei­ther in­di­vid­u­al­ly or in groups, the stu­dents cov­ered all the as­pects of cre­at­ing a busi­ness de­vel­op­ment plan for mi­cro-en­tre­pre­neurs, in­clud­ing a mar­ket­ing plan, cash flow pro­jec­tions and pro­ject­ed in­come state­ment.

Trudy Har­ri­paul, teacher in Prin­ci­ples of Busi­ness at Ma­yaro Sec­ondary School, ex­plained the scope of ben­e­fits the stu­dents re­ceived. "This is a great idea and the train­ing ses­sions with the stu­dents were strate­gic and on-point," she said in the re­lease.

"The top­ics have strength­ened the stu­dents' un­der­stand­ing of chal­leng­ing ar­eas of the POB syl­labus, giv­ing them a def­i­nite ad­van­tage in terms of their school-based as­sess­ments.

"A busi­ness plan ques­tion usu­al­ly ap­pears in the CXC ex­ams so I'm sure that the stu­dents who par­tic­i­pat­ed in this pro­gramme will ace that one. They re­al­ly have ben­e­fit­ted a lot and MIPED and YTEPP have to be com­mend­ed for this in­vest­ment in our young peo­ple."

Of the four sec­ondary schools tak­ing part in the pro­gramme, Ma­yaro and Rio Claro East were the first to com­plete the min­i­mum 12 con­tact hours of train­ing that start­ed in Feb­ru­ary.

Soon to com­plete the train­ing are Rio Claro West and Guayagua­yare. As an added in­cen­tive to the stu­dents, fol­low­ing the sub­mis­sion of all the com­plet­ed busi­ness plans, there will be an eval­u­a­tion by MIPED and YTEPP with awards pre­sent­ed to the top stu­dents

Wayne Grif­fith, Mi­cro En­tre­pre­neur­ship Tech­ni­cal Su­per­vi­sor at YTEPP, gave high marks to the train­ing pro­gramme: "The core el­e­ments of set­ting up a busi­ness were cov­ered and the stu­dents demon­strat­ed a great deal of un­der­stand­ing and tech­ni­cal knowl­edge.

"It helped them frame a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the sub­ject ar­eas cov­ered, and from the feed­back, some of them are al­ready look­ing for­ward to open their own busi­ness­es. We look for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing with MIPED in ex­pand­ing this pro­gramme be­cause it is ben­e­fi­cial to the next gen­er­a­tion of busi­ness own­ers.