Kali­fa Clyne

Stu­dents of three schools based in the Mor­vant area were ad­vised to take ad­van­tage of the end­less op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to them. The ad­vice was giv­en by au­thor Mer­le Hodge as she spoke to stu­dents yes­ter­day, dur­ing a work­shop held by the Unit­ed Na­tions Ed­u­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion (Un­esco) at the Rus­sell Lat­apy Sec­ondary School, Mor­vant.Hodge spoke to stu­dents in an in­ter­ac­tive ses­sion about ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties as well as ca­reer goals and over­com­ing ob­sta­cles and suc­ceed­ing in a bright and pos­i­tive fu­ture.

She told stu­dents that when she went through the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, it had been a chal­lenge just to get in­to a school and that pref­er­ence was usu­al­ly giv­en to males. She said to­day, stu­dents could take ad­van­tage of free pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary and ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, along with nu­mer­ous oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties giv­en to them. The work­shop formed part of Un­esco's Glob­al Cam­paign for Women and Girls' Ed­u­ca­tion.

Sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the T&T Na­tion­al Com­mis­sion for Un­esco, Su­san Shur­land, said though women and girls in T&T were not pro­hib­it­ed from ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­suits, com­pared to their coun­ter­parts in some African na­tions, it was im­por­tant that they learn about what was tak­ing place glob­al­ly.

Yes­ter­day's work­shop, which saw par­tic­i­pa­tion from stu­dents of Ser­vol's Laven­tille Life Cen­tre, St Do­minic's RC Pri­ma­ry School and Rus­sell Lat­apy Sec­ondary, was the last of three, with the first two tak­ing place at St Stephen's Col­lege, San-Fer­nan­do, and Spey­side Sec­ondary School in To­ba­go.