Fifty students at Brown’s Town Community College in St Ann are to benefit from the National Youth Service (NYS) Access to Higher Education Partnership (AHEP) programme which will provide financial assistance for studies in agriculture, tourism, Information Technology, logistics and engineering at the institution.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was recently signed at the college sealing NYS’s commitment to providing financial assistance through this programme.

Director of Community Services at NYS Omar Newell said students will receive $100,000 each to assist with their tuition. This, he noted, is a great improvement from the 20 person who received approximately $57, 000 previously.

Under this new arrangement a total of $5 million is expected to be paid out for students at the Brown’s Town Community College annually. In addition, the MOU will provide students with a work study opportunity which will see another 20 per cent of their fees being covered by the college.

Chairman of the College Board Dr Michael Whittingham said it was a welcome programme to the institution which provides tertiary education to many.

“It is a wonderful programme; it’s a programme I am hoping the students will embrace,” he told the audience in attendance at the MOU signing ceremony held recently at the college.

“It is something that we must be happy for and we welcome it with open arms,” he reiterated.

Meanwhile, Newell said the NYS is targeting areas which have shown growth in recent times.

The areas of logistics and engineering, he said, have been included to get persons prepared for the logistics hub in Jamaica.

“We cannot leave it to chance that when the logistics hub is off the ground, the youth will be prepared,” he explained.

Students receiving this assistance will be required to maintain a 3.0 Grade Point Average (GPA) and will have to participate in 20 hours of volunteerism each semester.

Minister of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna who gave the main address at the MOU signing said Jamaica has to be competitive in a global environment by pursuing its strength; hence her ministry has been implementing a number of programmes.

She noted that the ministry, through NYS, is implementing scholarships to train young people in areas to increase Jamaica’s competitiveness on the international scene. This, she said, has seen an increase in the NYS programmes to include the AHEP.

“We are implementing and rolling out scholarships to train young people in areas that we believe will give them the best opportunities to become job creators,” she said.

Hanna said Jamaica has to compete with other countries and must prepare young people to fight against unemployment.

“There is no break that we get because we are smaller, there is no break that we get because we are cuter, there is no break that we get because we run faster than everybody else; there is really no break because we are the ‘coolest’ country in the world,” she said.

“There was a time when we used to have preferential trade agreement but we don’t have them anymore,” she added.

The country, she said, has now identified areas it can beat the rest of the world in. She explained that Jamaica’s physical location is also an advantage, located between the trading bloc from China to South America.

“We have a natural port for ships and so we are also competitive in logistics,” she said, adding that people usually think of logistics as ships; however, it is more than that.

“Logistics is a lot more than ships; it’s about services; it’s about linking and networking,” she said.

In addition to AHEP, Hanna said the NYS will be rolling out other programmes to include entrepreneurship workshops through which persons will be able to receive grants to start businesses. Also, she said, the graduate work employment programme is another initiative set to benefit young people, specifically those leaving tertiary institutions and who are unemployed.

Hanna said this programme “will give young people the opportunity- who can’t find jobs even though they have degrees- to place them in private sector jobs to get experience to build their resumes.”

She said these graduates will be paid a stipend.

“These 50 scholarships today are just a step in a number of directions that we will be going,” she said.