Red Stripe provides $5.5 million in scholarships for HEART trainees
ABOUT 1,200 young Jamaicans are to benefit from Red Stripe’s renewed commitment to the HEART Trust/NTA.
The beer giant and the training agency recently reached an agreement that will see the company providing additional training under it flagship Learning for Life Programme (LFL), beginning this year.
Under the agreement, Red Stripe, through the Desnoes and Geddes (D&G) Foundation, will provide funding for a special employability training programme, at a cost of $5.5 million over a two-year period.
Speaking at the signing ceremony recently, chairman of the D&G Foundation, Noel DaCosta, said the initiative would enhance the skills the trainees already have.
“Having acquired the technical skills, the issue of employability arose for many newly trained persons. Soft skills are also necessary to integrate these young people into the work environment. HEART correctly identified this need and brought it to the D&G Foundation,” said DaCosta.
He added that the programme will close the gap between training and experience, so that these young people can have a real chance at success.
HEART Trust/NTA Chairman Maxine Wilson thanked Red Stripe for its continued support of the training institution.
“We are grateful for this partnership on yet another venture. Oftentimes our young people are technically competent, but the soft skills are absolutely necessary and will do a lot of good for them,” she said.
The students will benefit from a wide range of training areas, including customised, domestic housekeeping services; call centre operations; bartending; general cosmetology; business administration; interior decoration; and crop production, among others.
The LFL programme aims to empower young people from low-income and at- risk communities through training, job creation and entrepreneurship.
Students in the programme are between ages 19 and 39 years. Since its inception in Jamaica in 2008, the Learning for Life Programme has provided more than $120m in funding for the training of a wide cross section of young people. To date, a total of 11,748 Jamaicans have been trained.
