SPARK Initiative lights up classrooms in south Trinidad

As Trinidad and To­ba­go pre­pares for a more tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven and en­er­gy-con­scious fu­ture, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has launched its SPARK Ini­tia­tive—School Part­ner­ship for Aware­ness, Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty & Knowl­edge—aimed at ex­pos­ing sec­ondary school stu­dents to mod­ern elec­tric­i­ty sys­tems and emerg­ing ca­reers in the en­er­gy sec­tor as part of its 80th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions.

The ini­tia­tive was of­fi­cial­ly launched on Sun­day at Na­pari­ma Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do, where gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, ed­u­ca­tors and en­er­gy sec­tor lead­ers gath­ered to high­light the im­por­tance of youth en­gage­ment in shap­ing the coun­try’s fu­ture en­er­gy land­scape.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Clyde El­der com­mend­ed the pro­gramme, say­ing he was en­cour­aged by the “bright, young minds” in at­ten­dance. He stressed that Gov­ern­ment must con­tin­ue in­vest­ing in ini­tia­tives that build in­no­va­tion, re­silience and fu­ture readi­ness among young peo­ple in a rapid­ly evolv­ing glob­al en­vi­ron­ment.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Michael Dowlath al­so ad­dressed the gath­er­ing, prais­ing the stu­dents for their lead­er­ship, dis­ci­pline and ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion. He said their in­volve­ment re­flect­ed strong na­tion­al po­ten­tial and a grow­ing sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty among youth.

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary Shiv­an­na Sam joined of­fi­cials from T&TEC at the launch, along­side Chair­man Anil Ka­mal and oth­er mem­bers of the Com­mis­sion.

Ka­mal said the SPARK Ini­tia­tive re­flects T&TEC’s ex­pand­ed man­date be­yond elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply, em­pha­sis­ing its role in em­pow­er­ing cit­i­zens and prepar­ing fu­ture gen­er­a­tions for lead­er­ship in en­er­gy in­no­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. He said the pro­gramme is de­signed to trans­form stu­dents from pas­sive learn­ers in­to ac­tive con­trib­u­tors to the coun­try’s en­er­gy fu­ture.

Stu­dents were in­tro­duced to a se­ries of in­ter­ac­tive ses­sions cov­er­ing elec­tri­cal lit­er­a­cy, en­er­gy con­ser­va­tion and ef­fi­cien­cy, safe­ty aware­ness, ca­reer path­ways, and emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies such as re­new­able en­er­gy, GIS map­ping, drones, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence and da­ta an­a­lyt­ics.

They al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in hands-on demon­stra­tions, in­clud­ing a GIS ac­tiv­i­ty where stu­dents up­loaded self­ies and saw their lo­ca­tions plot­ted on a live dig­i­tal map. Drone demon­stra­tions and util­i­ty ve­hi­cle dis­plays fur­ther show­cased how tech­nol­o­gy sup­ports mod­ern elec­tric­i­ty op­er­a­tions.

Ca­reer de­vel­op­ment train­ing formed an­oth­er key com­po­nent, with ses­sions on ré­sumé writ­ing, in­ter­view prepa­ra­tion and pro­fes­sion­al pre­sen­ta­tion skills aimed at prepar­ing stu­dents for work­place ex­pec­ta­tions.

Par­tic­i­pants came from sev­er­al sec­ondary schools in south Trinidad, in­clud­ing Iere High School, South­ern Acad­e­my of the Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tists, Na­pari­ma Col­lege, Par­vati Girls’ Hin­du Col­lege and Holy Faith Con­vent Pe­nal.

Stu­dents de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as en­gag­ing and in­for­ma­tive, not­ing that the prac­ti­cal demon­stra­tions made com­plex con­cepts eas­i­er to un­der­stand. Many ex­pressed in­ter­est in fu­ture SPARK ses­sions as T&TEC plans to ex­pand the pro­gramme na­tion­wide.