THE Canadian Government, through the Caricom Education for Employment project and its implementing partner Colleges and Institutes Canada, has been actively working with different educational institutions in Jamaica to create a well-equipped labour force for the future.

One of the 30 projects currently being funded under the CAD$600-million, 12-year regional project, the education for employment programme, essentially links Jamaican vocational and technical institutions with Canadian colleges of their choice, in an effort to build the capacity of Jamaican institutions to develop technical and vocational education and training policy, occupational standards and curriculums in key economic sectors. This particular programme is a region-wide one, and is therefore present in other Caribbean islands.

“The regional programme that we have supports sustainable economic growth, it supports security, both in the context of rule of law and justice reform, and also disaster preparation and disaster mitigation,” Canadian High Commissioner Robert Ready told the Jamaica Observer Press Club last Wednesday.

The education for employment project comes under the broad pillar of sustainable economic growth.

“Essentially, how we implement this particular programme, for example, is to partner with local institutions so there is Excelsior Community College, there is the National Technology and Engineering Institute, Garmex Heart Academy, three sort of sub streams of these projects being delivered in Jamaica,” the Canadian high commissioner explained.

“This vocational training programme will take on perhaps different forms in Barbados or Guyana. Not every member of Caricom, or the English-speaking Caribbean, need participate in every regional programme, but nearly all of the programmes have a presence in Jamaica because Jamaica is the largest of the countries in the region,” he said.

Once schools are paired with Canadian educational institutions, this facilitates the delivery of training on specific areas.

“How they figure out how the pairings are going to go is that the colleges in the various countries get to choose in terms of what colleges they are paired with,” Ready explained. “They choose because what they are looking at is what are the skills that are needed by the workers in Jamaica for the jobs of tomorrow.”

The high commissioner highlighted that there is also a regional partner, Caribbean Association of National Training Agencies (CANTA), which helps in determining the regional standard for technical and vocational training, so as to facilitate, for example, correct accreditation if there is a job in demand in another country.

“Excelsior (Community College), for example, is where there is a global supply chain matched with certification being developed, and it feeds very directly into the aspirations around the logistics hub, for example, and [is] making sure that there is a workforce that is capable of participating in that project,” Ready said.

He told the Observer Press Club that the education and employment project is just one of the programmes for which the Canadian Government has pumped some CAD$65 million into the island over the last five years.