Sev­er­al young peo­ple in the Sec­ond Cale­do­nia com­mu­ni­ty in Mor­vant will now have new av­enues for em­ploy­ment and even self-em­ploy­ment, with their par­tic­i­pa­tion in a spe­cial hy­dro­pon­ics agri­cul­ture pro­gramme con­duct­ed by Core Foun­da­tion, which is sup­port­ed by bmo­bile and the bmo­bile Foun­da­tion.

Core Foun­da­tion re­cent­ly part­nered with bmo­bile Busi­ness, to launch an agri­cul­tur­al ven­ture in hy­dro­pon­ics with the Sec­ond Cale­do­nia com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in Mor­vant. The goal is to get young men and women in­volved in agri­cul­ture through the hy­dro­pon­ics sys­tem, con­tribut­ing to their self-re­liance and in­vok­ing their en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it.

An early start to his education… A student shares a tender moment with his son during the CORE Foundation's launch of the hydroponics agriculture initiative in Second Caledonia, Morvant. (Image courtesy bmobile)

The ini­tia­tive is time­ly giv­en that em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced in many com­mu­ni­ties in the past few years, and fur­ther com­pound­ed re­cent­ly by the eco­nom­ic fall­out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Dur­ing the re­cent of­fi­cial launch of the hy­dro­pon­ics agri­cul­ture pro­gramme at Sec­ond Cale­do­nia, TSTT’s Gen­er­al Man­ag­er En­ter­prise Ser­vices (Ag.), Dar­ryl Duke, shared some of his own ex­pe­ri­ences with stu­dents and par­tic­i­pants.

"When I was in school and your age, we were taught in school to get cheques but not write cheques,” Duke said.

“There is no bet­ter time to be an en­tre­pre­neur and to learn about busi­ness through this op­por­tu­ni­ty. Learn to be the one who is mak­ing the mon­ey and writ­ing the cheques. It's an op­por­tu­ni­ty of a life­time and I want each of you to lever­age tech­nol­o­gy to make you and this busi­ness more ef­fi­cient and that is what we are here to sup­port to­day and for the time to come," he added.

“There is no TSTT with­out T&T in it. And you are T&T. So, we are here, pledg­ing our sup­port to see this project thrive and grow," the TSTT se­nior ex­ec­u­tive said, as he con­firmed the com­pa­ny’s sup­port of the CORE Foun­da­tion and their com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment ini­tia­tives.

L to R – WASA’s Manager for Inventory, Control and Warehousing, Sheldon Noel; MP for Laventille East/Morvant, Adrian Leonce MP; CORE Foundation Chairman, Angelo Scope; and TSTT’s General Manager Enterprise Services (Ag.), Darryl Duke, at the CORE Foundation's launch of the hydroponics agriculture initiative in Second Caledonia, Morvant. (Image courtesy bmobile)

bmo­bile al­so has stepped in to con­tribute in­ter­net ac­cess to the Foun­da­tion’s Home­work Cen­tre, there­by equip­ping it with much need­ed con­nec­tiv­i­ty that would en­sure the com­ple­tion of as­sign­ments while many stu­dents con­tin­ue re­mote school­ing.

Chair­man and co-founder of Core Foun­da­tion, An­ge­lo Scope, re­it­er­at­ed why the hy­dro­pon­ics agri­cul­ture pro­gramme is so im­por­tant.

"This par­tic­u­lar project sprung up be­cause of a need that came from a con­ver­sa­tion with Raphne St Rose, a gen­tle­man who worked with me and was a promi­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive for projects in the com­mu­ni­ty. He's from the area and want­ed to find a means to help young men up here. These young men are yearn­ing to do some­thing dif­fer­ent that can cre­ate sus­tain­able fi­nan­cial free­dom for them­selves and their fam­i­lies," he high­light­ed.

Siobhan Thompson, TSTT’s Manager Enterprise Marketing and Darryl Duke, TSTT’s General Manager Enterprise Services (Ag.), are given a tour by proud students during the CORE Foundation's launch of the hydroponics agriculture initiative in Second Caledonia, Morvant. (Image courtesy bmobile)

Scope has worked to tran­si­tion the or­gan­i­sa­tion he helped cre­ate, from one fo­cused on char­i­ta­ble events and fundrais­ing, to more sus­tain­able pro­grammes.

"My com­mit­ment to help has been un­wa­ver­ing for the past few years and when Mr St Rose brought this idea to me and I could see that it was a vi­able av­enue for youth in the area, I knew we had to do it,” he not­ed.

Sup­plies and re­sources for the Core Foods Hy­dro­pon­ics ini­tia­tive were pro­vid­ed by bmo­bile; WASA; Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Laven­tille East/Mor­vant, Adri­an Leonce MP; among oth­er con­trib­u­tors.

Par­tic­i­pants al­so ben­e­fit­ed from the ex­per­tise of an en­gi­neer who taught them the cre­ation and main­te­nance of hy­dro­pon­ics sys­tems. The in­ten­tion is to show­case how crops grown hy­dro­pon­i­cal­ly have bet­ter out­comes and im­proved turn­around times, which would in­ter­est per­sons who wish to learn to do the same in their homes.

MP for Laventille East/Morvant, Adrian Leonce MP, chats with CORE Foundation students during the launch of the hydroponics agriculture initiative in Second Caledonia, Morvant. (Image courtesy bmobile)

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the area, Adri­an Leonce MP, en­cour­aged stu­dents and par­tic­i­pants by high­light­ing the spir­i­tu­al and phys­i­cal ben­e­fits of plant­i­ng seeds, and ben­e­fit­ing from reap­ing the fruits of hard work.

"It's up to you now, the mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, to plant the seeds not just phys­i­cal­ly, but in the minds of your neigh­bours and fam­i­ly about what is pos­si­ble par­tic­u­lar­ly in agri­cul­ture,” he said.

“Food is the on­ly thing that was sus­tain­able dur­ing the pan­dem­ic's clo­sures. So, this is a trans­for­ma­tion­al busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty to shine a bea­con in our com­mu­ni­ty. We des­per­ate­ly need bea­cons, like this, in our com­mu­ni­ties," he added.

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The Core Foun­da­tion has been en­gaged in work to en­hance the lives of many un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try. Es­tab­lished in 2015, its pri­ma­ry mis­sion is to im­prove, in­spire, and em­pow­er peo­ple to live a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life by cre­at­ing work­able so­lu­tions to erad­i­cate pover­ty and so­cial is­sues.  It con­tin­ues to de­vel­op men­tor­ship pro­grams, ed­u­ca­tion­al and pro­fes­sion­al pro­grams, sem­i­nars, work­shops, meet­ings, con­fer­ences, ex­hi­bi­tions and re­search ac­tiv­i­ties, all re­lat­ed to the so­cial sec­tor.

The bmo­bile Foun­da­tion fo­cus­es on na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on youth and ed­u­ca­tion.