Hundreds Attend Opportunities Fair In Clarendon

More than 650 young persons in Clarendon have benefited from an ‘Opportunities Fair’ hosted by the National Youth Service (NYS), in collaboration with the HEART Trust/National Training Agency (HEART/NTA).
Held on February 20 at the Denbigh High School in May Pen, the fair targeted young persons between the ages of 14 and 29 years to provide them with information about employment and educational opportunities available to them.
“If you leave here today knowing where you want to go and knowing how to get there, whether it is going back to school or whether you want to go into entrepreneurial projects, we at the NYS will find a way to help you. HEART/NTA offers an array of programmes.and we have programmes and projects that can be developed at your community level to help you find a way into gainful employment,” Executive Director of the NYS, Adinhair Jones told the young people.
He pointed out that there were some 141,000 young people in the island who were neither employed nor involved in a training programme, adding that they formed a large part of the human resource capacity which needed attention.
The participants benefited from training sessions on ‘Goal Setting and Individual Career Planning’, ‘Generating Ideas and Entrepreneurship’ as well as hands on training for entrepreneurial projects such as food preparation and cosmetology.
About 14 organizations, including private enterprises, educational institutions and other government agencies mounted exhibitions. About 10 of them held educational sessions for the participants.Mr. Jones pointed out that this was the eighth such fair hosted by the NYS.