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Last Updated: Mar 3, 2017 - 8:35:12 PM |
Fresh Start Programme (Photo: Felicity Ingraham)
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Nassau, Bahamas - Ninety young people have been given a new lease on life and start intense training this week with the Ministry of Youth, Sports & Culture’s (MYSC) Fresh Start Programme.
For the next four months, participants, ages 17 to 25, will be engrossed in a training schedule that includes skills training, Bahama Host, inter-personal skills and more. They will have the opportunity to be placed into the the public and private workforce on an internship. Most past participants received full term employment upon successful completion of the programme, making it one of the most successful programmes of MYSC.
Fresh Start Programme (Photo: Felicity Ingraham)
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This year, MYSC sent out 820 applications and received 600 completed applications. All six hundred applicants were interviewed, leading to 90 young persons being chosen for the programme.
“This is one of the ministry’s signature programmes; it answers the question employers have put before us - are young people really ready for the workforce?,” said Carla Brown-Roker, Fresh Start Programme Coordinator.
“Many of them lack employable skills - soft skills and hard skills. Since 1993 (when the programme began), this programme has blossomed over the years and in the last several years, we have ushered in skills training through institutions.”
Director of Youth, K. Darron Turnquest (Photo: Felicity Ingraham)
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Fresh Start was once just a job readiness programme, but Mrs. Brown-Roker said MYSC found that the young people needed to be given skills that would allow them to be assigned directly to a workplace after training.
Participating institutions include the University of The Bahamas, Synergy Bahamas, BTVI, Full Scope Vision, Coaters of the Caribbean, and Bahamas Institute of Business Technology. formerly success training college.
Synergy Bahamas is offering Office Procedures and Receptionist Training courses, as well as Microsoft Office Excel and Word. Kenneth McPhee of Full Scope Vision will lead mixology classes, while Coaters of the Caribbean offers a butler programme for the hospitality industry.
Former Fresh Start participant Charles Seymour (right) came to share advice on how to keep a job after the programme (Photo: Felicity Ingraham)
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Bahama Host, skills training and personal development will continue until the final three weeks when they are sent to internship.
“Seminars are held every Friday and we are preparing the participants to be able to answer what employers say are lacking in young applicants; which is an absence of the soft skills and actual skills,” said Mrs. Brown-Roker.
“Soft skills include being responsible, considerate, being honest, being respectful of others and authority, and taking initiative. Very often if a young person is given a chance for employment you find that the slightest thing causes them to lose the job and when we track it, we find it comes under areas of soft skills such as not calling in sick or communicating properly with the company.”
Jonico Pratt, spoken word artist, delivers a stirring (Photo: Felicity Ingraham)motivational poem to Fresh Start participants, while Senior Youth Officer Ingris Sears-Deveaux, who presided over the opening ceremony, looks on
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“It was a golden opportunity for youth division because we can assist them in improving their current situation, and helping them to secure another job because many of them have already received training and just needed work as soon as possible,” she added.
“Every single applicant can be connected or be assisted in some form.”
Fresh Start is also being held in Grand Bahama and is slated to begin on Family Islands in the near future.
Kenneth and Keisha McPhee of Full Scope Vision, programme trainers (Photo: Felicity Ingraham)
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Fresh Start Programme (Photo: Felicity Ingraham)
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Carla Brown-Roker, Fresh Start Coordinator, converses with a Synergy Bahamas rep (Photo: Felicity Ingraham)
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