An­na-María Gar­cía-Brooks, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Group Hu­man Re­sources, Re­pub­lic Bank ad­vised re­cent grad­u­ates of the Youth Link Ap­pren­tice­ship Pro­gramme to em­brace all of life’s op­por­tu­ni­ties, even those which are chal­leng­ing.

This, she added, was key in build­ing a bet­ter so­ci­ety.

She was speak­ing at the 33rd grad­u­at­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the pro­gramme re­cent­ly held at the bank’s head of­fice at Park Street, Port-of -Spain.

Since its in­cep­tion in 1986, the pro­gramme has helped hun­dreds of young peo­ple bridge the gap be­tween sec­ondary school and the world of work by pro­vid­ing them with valu­able work ex­pe­ri­ence and op­por­tu­ni­ties for per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment.

This year, 40 sec­ondary school grad­u­ates be­tween the ages of 16 to 19 par­tic­i­pat­ed in the pro­gramme.

Over a sev­en-month pe­ri­od, they were as­signed to var­i­ous branch­es across the bank’s net­work and were en­gaged in a range of cours­es in­clud­ing of­fice pro­ce­dures, per­son­al de­vel­op­ment, bank­ing op­er­a­tions, cus­tomer ser­vice and fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy.

Gar­cía-Brooks who al­so ad­vised the grad­u­ates to recog­nise that their de­ci­sions and ac­tions con­trol their des­tiny added, “Every de­ci­sion is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to em­brace change, to set a new path.”

Thank­ing the bank for em­brac­ing youths and pro­vid­ing in­valu­able train­ing, vale­dic­to­ri­ans, Je­re­mi­ah Gibbs-Clarke and Arielle Forde, said they were con­fi­dent about what lies in store re­gard­ing the world of work.

Gibbs-Clarke and Forde were joined by three oth­er spe­cial awardees who were recog­nised for ex­celling in dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the pro­gramme.

Sha­nia Pe­ters was giv­en the award for Best Busi­ness Plan, Jo An­ndra Ot­t­ley was ac­knowl­edged as the Most Im­proved ap­pren­tice and Jer­von Jack was recog­nised for be­ing the Most Out­stand­ing ap­pren­tice over­all.

Re­pub­lic Bank’s Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Der­win How­ell who al­so com­mend­ed the grad­u­ates for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion not­ed, “Youth Link is about so much more than build­ing work ex­pe­ri­ence.

“It’s al­so about build­ing in­di­vid­u­als. Not just any in­di­vid­u­als, but in­di­vid­u­als who will one day be lead­ers of our so­ci­ety.”