The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has launched its SPARK Ini­tia­tive - School Part­ner­ship for Aware­ness, Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty & Knowl­edge - as part of its 80th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, in­tro­duc­ing sec­ondary school stu­dents to ca­reers in the en­er­gy sec­tor and mod­ern elec­tric­i­ty sys­tems.

The launch took place on Sun­day at Na­pari­ma Col­lege in San Fer­nan­do, where Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Clyde El­der com­mend­ed the ini­tia­tive and em­pha­sised the need to pre­pare young peo­ple for a rapid­ly chang­ing fu­ture. El­der said he was in­spired by the “bright, young minds” in at­ten­dance and stressed that gov­ern­ment must ac­tive­ly in­vest in pro­grammes that build in­no­va­tion, re­silience and readi­ness.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Michael Dowlath al­so ad­dressed stu­dents, us­ing ac­ces­si­ble lan­guage to praise their lead­er­ship, dis­ci­pline and en­gage­ment. He not­ed that their par­tic­i­pa­tion re­flect­ed a strong sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and po­ten­tial among the coun­try’s youth.