Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Par­tic­i­pants in the Geri­atric Ado­les­cent Part­ner­ship Pro­gramme (GAPP) will re­ceive a $700 in­crease in their stipend from next month. Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Nizam Baksh said he ap­proached Cab­i­net and it agreed to in­crease the $1,800 month­ly stipend to $2,500. Baksh said GAPP ful­filled the ob­jec­tive of peo­ple-cen­tred de­vel­op­ment which placed hu­man de­vel­op­ment at the core of the sys­tem of gov­er­nance in T&T.

He was speak­ing at the launch of Cy­cle One/Lev­el One of the pro­gramme at his min­istry of­fices, La Fan­tasie Road, St Ann's, yes­ter­day.

The pro­gramme, he said, had been in op­er­a­tion for 17 years and over that pe­ri­od, hun­dreds of peo­ple ben­e­fit­ed from train­ing which helped to pre­pare par­tic­i­pants for ca­reers in geri­atric care and up­grade their skills in care-giv­ing. The pro­gramme has two lev­els-one tar­gets young peo­ple be­tween the ages of 17-25 and the oth­er pro­vides train­ing to those be­tween the ages of 18-30. Baksh said the pro­gramme was de­signed to sen­si­tise young peo­ple about the age­ing process and help them, through train­ing and field vis­i­ta­tion, to de­vel­op prac­ti­cal skills in geri­atric care.

He said: "While the young peo­ple have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­crease their earn­ing pow­er, they al­so learn valu­able life skills, in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ships, prepar­ing for the word of work and en­tre­pre­neur­ial skills. "At the end of the pro­gramme, we en­vis­age that grad­u­ates are more sen­si­tive to the needs of the el­der­ly in their im­me­di­ate sur­round­ings and will de­vel­op a keen un­der­stand­ing of their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to oth­ers."