SPARK Initiative lights up classrooms in south Trinidad

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has launched its SPARK Ini­tia­tive - School Part­ner­ship for Aware­ness, Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty & Knowl­edge - as part of its 80th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, in­tro­duc­ing sec­ondary school stu­dents to ca­reers in the en­er­gy sec­tor and mod­ern elec­tric­i­ty sys­tems.

The launch took place on Sun­day at Na­pari­ma Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do, where Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Clyde El­der com­mend­ed the ini­tia­tive and em­pha­sised the need to pre­pare young peo­ple for a rapid­ly chang­ing fu­ture. El­der said he was in­spired by the “bright, young minds” in at­ten­dance and stressed that gov­ern­ment must ac­tive­ly in­vest in pro­grammes that build in­no­va­tion, re­silience and readi­ness.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Michael Dowlath al­so ad­dressed stu­dents, us­ing ac­ces­si­ble lan­guage to praise their lead­er­ship, dis­ci­pline and en­gage­ment. He not­ed that their par­tic­i­pa­tion re­flect­ed a strong sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and po­ten­tial among the coun­try’s youth.

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

Ka­mal said T&TEC’s man­date goes be­yond elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply, high­light­ing its re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to em­pow­er cit­i­zens and pre­pare fu­ture gen­er­a­tions for lead­er­ship in en­er­gy in­no­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. He ex­plained that SPARK is de­signed to shift stu­dents from pas­sive learn­ers to ac­tive par­tic­i­pants in shap­ing the coun­try’s en­er­gy fu­ture.

The pro­gramme in­tro­duced stu­dents to 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.

Stu­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed in hands-on demon­stra­tions, in­clud­ing a GIS ex­er­cise where they up­loaded self­ies and viewed their lo­ca­tions on a live dig­i­tal map. They al­so ob­served drone demon­stra­tions and util­i­ty ve­hi­cle op­er­a­tions, gain­ing ex­po­sure to how tech­nol­o­gy sup­ports mod­ern elec­tric­i­ty ser­vices.

Ca­reer de­vel­op­ment seg­ments fo­cused on ré­sumé writ­ing, in­ter­view prepa­ra­tion and pro­fes­sion­al pre­sen­ta­tion skills, help­ing stu­dents un­der­stand work­place ex­pec­ta­tions.

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

Stu­dents de­scribed the ini­tia­tive as en­gag­ing and in­for­ma­tive, not­ing that the prac­ti­cal demon­stra­tions made learn­ing more re­lat­able. Many ex­pressed in­ter­est in fu­ture SPARK ses­sions as T&TEC ex­pands the pro­gramme na­tion­wide.