Every year for the past 40 years, T&T cit­i­zens have left this coun­try to ex­pand their ed­u­ca­tion via the UK Chevening Schol­ar­ship.

Typ­i­cal­ly, two or three peo­ple are af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take up the op­tion, but Chi­nali Pa­tel, head of po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and press at the British High Com­mis­sion in Port-of-Spain, is hop­ing that with greater cor­po­rate sup­port from both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al in­vestors the pro­gramme can be ex­pand­ed.

“UK Chevening Schol­ar­ship is a ful­ly fund­ed mas­ter’s de­gree in any UK uni­ver­si­ty, and it fo­cus­es on pro­vid­ing you with a stipend, ac­com­mo­da­tion, and trav­el cost. But the best thing about it is you can do a ful­ly fund­ed mas­ter’s de­gree of your choos­ing, in your kind of spe­cial­ism. So, for ex­am­ple, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and fash­ion were the two cours­es cho­sen by those Chevening schol­ars from last year,” said Pa­tel, who is the lo­cal­ly-based lead for the pro­gramme.

Speak­ing in an in­ter­view at the High Com­mis­sion­er’s res­i­dence in Mar­aval on Thurs­day, Pa­tel said, “We are re­al­ly look­ing for cor­po­rate part­ner­ships when it comes to the Chevening schol­ar­ship to in­crease the num­ber of schol­ars im­pact­ed. For the last 41 years, we’ve had over 170 schol­ars. So around about 170 schol­ars have passed through. We want to in­crease that so cor­po­rate part­ners, let’s get to­geth­er. Let’s part­ner to get more schol­ar­ships,” she said.

Pa­tel said the schol­ar­ship has helped T&T schol­ars ex­plore new fields which can help bol­ster new sec­tors and, by ex­ten­sion, the econ­o­my.

One of last year’s re­turn­ing schol­ars, Jes­sel Brizan, who read for a mas­ter’s de­gree in fash­ion man­age­ment with the aim of im­prov­ing the busi­ness as­pect of the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try. Brizan and Sache Alexan­der-George were the 2023 schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ents.

“My back­ground re­al­ly was in de­sign,” said Brizan, who ini­tial­ly stud­ied Men’s wear de­sign at the Fash­ion In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in New York. How­ev­er, af­ter spend­ing time teach­ing fash­ion cours­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T for al­most a decade, he re­alised he need­ed greater ed­u­ca­tion to help the sec­tor de­vel­op.

“I want­ed to en­hance the man­age­ment side as­pect of my ca­reer. So I want­ed to fill cer­tain knowl­edge gaps, but al­so get that ex­po­sure. And then me com­ing back now I can help in terms of fur­ther de­vel­op­ing my par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sion,” Brizan told the Busi­ness Guardian.

He said very of­ten there was a very nar­row view and ap­proach to the in­dus­try and he hoped to open the eyes of the pop­u­la­tion to the oth­er as­pects of grow­ing lo­cal brands.

“There is a ten­den­cy for lo­cals to think that fash­ion de­sign­ers are just seam­stress­es, dress­mak­ers and so on. Fash­ion en­com­pass­es a wide range of ac­tiv­i­ties,” Brizan said.

Ex­plain­ing that there was an over­looked man­age­ment as­pect of the fash­ion in­dus­try, Brizan said sev­er­al steps in the val­ue chain are of­ten not con­sid­ered such as sourc­ing and sup­ply, fi­nance and ac­count­ing, as well as mer­chan­dis­ing, man­age­ment and busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The man­age­ment as­pect en­com­pass­es all of those things. So, it’s not just about the de­sign as­pect or sewing and so on. If you want to have a sol­id foun­da­tion and build a re­al­ly for­mi­da­ble brand, you need to have that as­pect. And I think that is some­thing that is sore­ly lack­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He al­so stressed that it was al­so im­por­tant for lo­cal brands to push their fo­cus be­yond these shores.

“If you’re a fash­ion brand. Trinidad and To­ba­go is too small to be a pri­ma­ry mar­ket. So in or­der to grow and de­vel­op your brand, you re­al­ly need to ac­cess the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket,” said Brizan, who re­turned from the UK on Au­gust 30.

Chevening Schol­ars are re­quired to spend at least two years back in their home coun­try up­on grad­u­a­tion, and he is al­ready in the process of shar­ing his knowl­edge.

“One of the most press­ing con­cerns as far as lo­cal fash­ion is con­cerned is sus­tain­abil­i­ty. I’ve seen peo­ple men­tion it, but it’s re­al­ly a huge is­sue, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to fast fash­ion, and sit­u­a­tions such as green­wash­ing and so on. So it’s some­thing that needs to be im­ple­ment­ed here. I am part of a com­mit­tee with T&T Bu­reau of Stan­dards right now, and we’re try­ing to de­vel­op a stan­dard for sus­tain­able gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing. So I’m part of that process right now,” he said.

One of the 2024 schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ents, Reyad Mo­hammed is al­so hop­ing to make an in­stant con­tri­bu­tion up­on re­turn.

Mo­hammed, a cur­rent em­ploy­ee of the En­vi­ron­ment Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, is set to do a mas­ter’s de­gree in cli­mate change at the Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege in Lon­don.

“I re­al­ly hope when I go there, I could get back and I could bring that in­ter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive back here and look at all the best prac­tices that many coun­tries glob­al­ly would have adopt­ed.

“The re­al chal­lenge would be to see how we could make the glob­al best prac­tices our own here, be­cause, of course, dif­fer­ent coun­tries, dif­fer­ent con­texts.

“See­ing how we can ap­ply cli­mate change knowl­edge here, lo­cal­ly and in terms of fre­quen­cy and in­ten­si­ty of storms is the goal,” said Mo­hammed, who ex­plained that the EMA has agreed to al­low him to re­sume his role up­on his sched­uled com­ple­tion next year.

“Cli­mate change is such a cross-cut­ting is­sue and as a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state, we re­al­ly need a lot more pro­fes­sion­als who are de­vot­ed to pro­tect­ing our is­land from this cri­sis to re­al­ly do as much as we can in terms of adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion, but al­so in terms of cli­mate jus­tice and pro­tect­ing our peo­ple. I re­al­ly want to take up the man­tle, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing from the field of ed­u­ca­tion, to re­al­ly make that bridge be­tween cli­mate change and ed­u­ca­tion,” he said.

Mo­hammed said the re­cent im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Beryl served as a wake­up call for many, al­though, he not­ed, there is still a rel­a­tive­ly slow re­sponse from many in T&T.

“We need to look at how to im­prove our in­fra­struc­ture, not on­ly in­to the sup­port sys­tem,” said Mo­hammed.

He shrugged off those who have called for him to fo­cus on oth­er ar­eas.

“You have peo­ple telling you every­day, that no­body is go­ing to take you on. I mean, the re­al­i­ty is that T&T is an oil and gas econ­o­my and it doesn’t look good, but it’s an is­sue that doesn’t choose who it af­fects, and it changes to an is­sue that af­fects every­body glob­al­ly.” 

Pa­tel said very of­ten Chevening schol­ars like Mo­hammed did cours­es which could aid both the UK and T&T.

“Think of study gen­er­al­ly. I’m hop­ing that younger gen­er­a­tions say more about cli­mate change sus­tain­abil­i­ty, but al­so think about ways they can help their com­mu­ni­ties,” she said, adding that she hoped with more bright minds from the re­gion em­brac­ing these op­por­tu­ni­ties, more so­lu­tions and op­tions for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion could be found.