In a bid to com­bat high food prices, YTEPP Lim­it­ed will be ex­pand­ing its train­ing port­fo­lio and open­ing a Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­ture in Sep­tem­ber.

This was an­nounced by YTEPP chair­man Tho­ra Best yes­ter­day, as she spoke with Guardian Me­dia dur­ing YTEPP’s first pub­lic speak­ing com­pe­ti­tion since the pan­dem­ic at its Wood­ford Lodge, Ch­agua­nas head­quar­ters.

Best said YTEPP has been of­fer­ing short cours­es in agri­cul­ture but will up the ante.

“Our plan in the not too dis­tant fu­ture is to es­tab­lish a Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­ture at our Wa­ter­loo (Cara­pichaima) venue.”

She said the Wa­ter­loo venue has been used pre­vi­ous­ly to rear tilapia.

“We are now go­ing to ex­pand it to do so much more in agri­cul­tur­al short crops and al­so cas­cadoux, shrimp, prawn and, of course, tilapia.”

Best said train­ing will be done in short and sea­son­ing crops. She said the pro­duce will be in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to YTEPP’s Culi­nary Arts In­sti­tute.

Best said the train­ing will con­tin­ue for ma­ture per­sons who are on the bread­line.

She said YTEPP is do­ing a work­force re­cov­ery pro­gramme that was over­sub­scribed. YTEPP is cater­ing to per­sons in its re­train­ing pro­gramme be­tween the ages of 35-60 and par­tic­i­pants will get a stipend for trans­porta­tion and food.

The pub­lic speak­ing com­ple­tion was based on the theme Re-imag­in­ing Youth Skills Post-pan­dem­ic. The com­pe­ti­tion was di­vid­ed in­to two parts—a pre­pared speech com­pe­ti­tion and an im­promp­tu speech com­pe­ti­tion that show­cased the tal­ents of YTEPP par­tic­i­pants from var­i­ous cen­tres.

YTEPP CEO Nigel Par­ris said pub­lic speak­ing is strate­gi­cal­ly aligned to their ca­reer en­hance­ment train­ing pro­gramme. He said it push­es peo­ple out of their com­fort zone and chal­lenges them to think cre­ative­ly, while giv­ing trainees a chance to ex­press them­selves and build self-es­teem and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills.

The pre­pared speech com­pe­ti­tion was won by Kayan Joseph-St Clair, of the Va­len­cia Cen­tre, while Amoo­ra Ma­hep­at, of the Sig­na­ture Cre­ations Cen­tre, was sec­ond and third was Ne­mi­ah Tan­nis, of the Diego Mar­tin Cen­tre. The im­promp­tu speech cat­e­go­ry was won by Eliz­a­beth Smith, of the Mal­oney Re­gion­al Cen­tre, sec­ond was Bri­an­na Cyrus and third was Soreen Charles, of the Va­len­cia Cen­tre.