General News
New 'kid' on the block
Minerva opens its doors for training in risk, performance management
BY PETRE WILLIAMS Environment editor williamsp@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, January 04, 2009
WHETHER it's coping with the school bully or outwitting the corporate psychopath, Minerva Training provides the answer to a variety of risk and performance management challenges.
At least that's the way that co-founder and marketing director Collette Barham is selling the entity, which offers professional training in a variety of courses to management and supervisory-level workers.
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| Co-founder and marketing director of Minerva Training Collette Barham stands just outside their administrative office along Constant Spring Road in Kingston. (Photo: Bryan Cummings) |
Minerva opened its doors at Constant Spring Road in Kingston in May last year at a cost of about $450,000.
Courses and workshops, held at the Hilton Kingston Hotel, are offered in five main areas, including:
. corporate risk and crisis management;
. occupational health, safety and industrial security;
. performance and quality management;
. information assurance/ information security management; and
. business technology and information management.
Last year, Minerva offered training workshops to representatives from a variety of organisations, among them the Electoral Office of Jamaica, the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the National Solid Waste Management Authority and the Passport, Immigration & Citizenship Agency, according to information from its website - www.minervatc.com.
The workshops, which cost participants $35,000, were run over three days and consisted of 18-hour sessions covering such subjects as tourism risk management, leadership and team building, and strategic performance management.
Operating from a single office at Princeville Plaza on Constant Spring Road in Kingston, where the administrative work is done, Minerva is now awaiting certification from
the University Council of Jamaica (UCJ).
"We have made contact with them (the UCJ) and we have actually given in what we have done so far and are awaiting some kind of response from them," Barham told Career & Education.
Checks with the UCJ revealed that Minerva had in fact contacted them, but that it had a far way to go before
it could receive UCJ's stamp of approval.
"The UCJ quality assurance process has two steps. (The first is) the registration of the institution where we take a team in to evaluate the institution to see whether it is operating at the standards required by a tertiary institution in Jamaica; and when the institution gets registration, then they get accreditation," said Grace Gordon, senior accreditation officer with the UCJ.
The UCJ is the Government-appointed statutory body that oversees standards and quality for tertiary education on the island.
"The UCJ mark of registration is what says that it (any institution) is an approved tertiary institution in Jamaica, that the programme is what it should be and that it can
be recognised nationally, regionally and internationally," noted Gordon.
However, while it does not currently have UCJ accreditation, Barham said that Minerva had sought to craft its courses in line with the standards of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).
The ISO is the world's largest developer and publisher of international standards, according to its website, with a network of the national standards institutes of some 157 countries with a central secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland.
"One thing that is very important is that our courses are aligned with the ISO standards. It is what the world judges you by. It is one of those recognised standards; it is a peg to say that you are at a certain level," said Barham. "The courses have not been approved by the ISO per se, but they are aligned in terms of the research that we do to come up with the courses that we are actually running. (At the same time), there are different universities overseas that actually do these courses as well, so we look at them to ensure that what we do is in alignment."
Asked to explain the value of the name 'Minerva', Barham said: "Minerva was the ancient Roman goddess of Wisdom, hence the name Minerva. What we want to do is impart wisdom and war against not having the knowledge of how to deal with certain specific areas."
She said she and her husband Craig (the other founder of Minerva) had felt moved to contribute to Jamaica's development in this way.
"I think we recognised that there is the need for this kind of training and Jamaica being in a region of the world prone to disaster cost and loss than any other area, a lot of people don't really realise it. We are not prepared to deal with hurricanes... crime and violence, and the whole area of security," she said.
Importantly, Barham said that what Minerva offered was practical information to students.
"It is not only theory. What we do with our training is that we try to ensure that people can leave and be practical. They can go out and actually do," she said. "So they can, for example, write manuals for their organisations and actually do something. A lot of times you go to seminars and there is a lot of theory coming out of it but you don't really have a skill."
Added Barham: "Our courses are in line with international standards. We are looking for people to do their professional qualifications as well. So our courses will prepare people as certified risk managers, certified information security systems (operators) and all of these other things."
The workshops last year saw participants receiving a certificate of participation at the end. It would take up to a year to earn a diploma in any of the areas on offer. So far, 39 students have undergone their workshops, but as yet no one is pursuing a diploma.
"We are still in the process of getting certified. But quite a few students who have come to the workshops have expressed an interest in continuing," Barham told Career & Education.
Meanwhile, she said that the challenges to get Minerva off the ground have been many.
"A lot of the people sometimes don't quite understand or they don't know of risk management in terms of what we are doing. They tend to look at it in terms of insurance," she said. "So a lot of it is really informing the public. For example, we had a course on information assurance and a lot of people were not aware of what was involved in it. So I think a lot of it is really getting the knowledge out to people so they know what it is all about."
Information assurance, by the way, concerns an individual or company's ability to protect their information, personal or business.
"This is the kind of thing that we are trying to get out there for people - how to protect your system from intruders," said Barham, who is a former soldier and member of the Jamaica Defence Force. "Another of the areas that we are also looking at is safety in schools. How do you protect your kids? It is something that we take for granted, but people need to learn how to take care of things like bullying in schools."
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