By Antonia McGrath | Founder and Director
Dear Friends,
Every 3-4 months when I come to write one of these update reports, I am astounded at how much has happened since the last one! Today is no exception. Over these last months, we have grown our scholarship programme from 12 to 26 students and we have been making big steps in our work at the educate. Youth Center with several new programmes up and running.
In February we hosted our 2023 Scholarship Award ceremony in the Youth Center where we welcomed our new and returning scholars. This year we have 22 students in our high school programme and 4 in university. We also invited our students’ families to the Youth Center, and started off the year with a series of team building and goal-setting activities. Students were each given a circle of coloured paper and wrote on it their goals for the year, which ranged from “learning to be a more positive person,” to “keep playing football,” “be a good example for my younger siblings,” and “share my knowledge and training with other youth and children.”
Since then, all of our scholars have been attending weekly activities at the Youth Center – a required part of their scholarship as we aim to support students in their holistic development. One of the first programmes have been computer classes in our computer lab, where students have been learning to use Word, PowerPoint and Excel, but also developing typing skills, and learning basic coding. Knowing how to use a computer is an essential skill, and one that many youth in rural areas don’t have the opportunity to develop, making the computer lab at our Youth Center a vital resource to help young people develop skills that will help them gain meaningful employment and develop creative and problem solving skills using technology. These classes are being run by our university Computer Science scholar Javier, who also runs a weekly class for primary school aged children from the community.
We have also had students engaged in a community arts festival where they participated in the creation of the famous sawdust carpets as part of Trinidad’s Semana Santa (Holy Week) celebrations, recycling activities where students have developed ways to re-utilize plastic bottles as planters, and workshops on effective communication and teamwork. We also have English and art courses starting in a few days' time. All of these programmes, alongside access to high school and university studies, create spaces for our scholars to develop the skills and confidence to become leaders who can foster change within their communities.
Watching this progress is nothing short of exhilarating. Our vision remains clear: to continue to expand on our scholarship programme and to include within it support for our scholars’ holistic personal, academic and professional development, while facilitating spaces of learning and community engagement through our school and community libraries.
With a space to call our own and a community of engaged youth, we are excited to continue to grow and structure our work in Trinidad! On behalf of the entire educate. team, thank you for your continued support.
With gratitude,
Antonia
By Antonia McGrath | educate. Founder and Director
By Antonia McGrath | educate. Founder
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