TCL awards school-supply vouchers to 25 SEA achievers

Twen­ty-five stu­dents from com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing Trinidad Ce­ment Lim­it­ed (TCL) have re­ceived school-sup­ply vouch­ers af­ter be­ing recog­nised for their per­for­mance in the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA).

The stu­dents were pre­sent­ed with the vouch­ers dur­ing TCL’s ninth an­nu­al “Build Your Fu­ture” Awards for S.E.A. Ex­cel­lence, held on Au­gust 11 at the com­pa­ny’s Clax­ton Bay fa­cil­i­ty.

The pro­gramme recog­nis­es out­stand­ing SEA per­form­ers from TCL’s fence­line com­mu­ni­ties of Mayo and Clax­ton Bay and pro­vides as­sis­tance to fam­i­lies as stu­dents tran­si­tion from pri­ma­ry to sec­ondary school.

This year’s re­cip­i­ents came from five TCL part­ner pri­ma­ry schools: Clax­ton Bay Se­nior An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School, Macaulay Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, Mayo Ro­man Catholic Pri­ma­ry School, Mt. Pleas­ant Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and Union Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School.

Group Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Fran­cis­co Aguil­era said the ini­tia­tive forms part of TCL’s wider com­mit­ment to ed­u­ca­tion and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment.

“Sup­port­ing ed­u­ca­tion is one of the most valu­able in­vest­ments we can make,” Aguil­era said. “When a young per­son suc­ceeds, the ben­e­fits reach far be­yond that in­di­vid­ual. Their fam­i­ly is strength­ened, their com­mu­ni­ty gains a pos­i­tive ex­am­ple, and our coun­try gains an­oth­er cit­i­zen with the abil­i­ty to con­tribute, lead and cre­ate change.”

The as­sis­tance comes as fam­i­lies pre­pare for the ad­di­tion­al ex­pens­es as­so­ci­at­ed with stu­dents en­ter­ing sec­ondary school.

Speak­ing on be­half of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries, Fay­ola Birm­ing­ham of Macaulay Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School thanked TCL for its con­tin­ued sup­port, not­ing the im­por­tance of the as­sis­tance to stu­dents and their fam­i­lies at this stage of their ed­u­ca­tion.

She al­so ac­knowl­edged the ce­ment pro­duc­er’s sup­port for its part­ner schools and high­light­ed the role of cor­po­rate in­vest­ment in com­mu­ni­ties and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

Since the “Build Your Fu­ture” Awards be­gan nine years ago, the pro­gramme has sup­port­ed more than 200 fam­i­lies.

TCL said the ini­tia­tive forms part of its long-run­ning in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion, youth de­vel­op­ment and com­mu­ni­ty part­ner­ships, with the an­nu­al awards pro­vid­ing di­rect sup­port to stu­dents while re­in­forc­ing its re­la­tion­ship with schools in the com­mu­ni­ties sur­round­ing its op­er­a­tions.

The lat­est group of awardees will now en­ter sec­ondary school with the as­sis­tance of the school-sup­ply vouch­ers as they be­gin the next stage of their ed­u­ca­tion.