COMMENTARY

Employment Opportunities and Vocational Training

Friday, May  6, 2005

By Enna McField

Professional training for our young people striving to achieve a future in the Cayman Islands should be an important consideration for all of us.

What does the future hold for the individuals that are graduating out of High School?

We need to offer a programme that will help young Caymanians better their chances of having a positive future in the field they desire.

As students become young adults they begin to realise where they are heading and young people need strong-minded role models to follow so we can achieve the goals we are aiming for.

There is at present no real vocational training program on offer to improve things for the future of young adults. How do we go about getting such a programme started and keep it running?

There are so many young people that have various skills but do not have the proper training to improve and develop their talents. This is something we as a nation need to look into. I think if we apply ourselves properly and adequately, we can make a difference in the way we are being looked after, not just as Caymanians, but also as ambitious Caymanians working towards a future.

It is important for a system to be established to help us find ways in which our employment opportunities can be improved.

The qualifications for getting many different jobs are changing and increasing in many cases from requiring only a high school diploma to a university degree, which demonstrates how much the stakes have been raised.

We need to seriously consider taking our education at the next level, no matter how hard it may seem. We as young people must be the ones to take the next step towards it because if we don’t people will say, “Caymanians are too lazy, and that’s why ex-pats are taking preference over them for jobs.”

However even when young people are qualified to take a certain position, they don’t always have the necessary experience required.

That is where the real problems can begin for young people. It is a vicious circle. We don’t have any way of obtaining the experience because there is nowhere to get it. After all, do you want an ex-pat being your boss when you can easily go back to school and retain your degree and then have them call you boss?

That would be a good feeling, once you have the ambition and hard work you can get anything. Your degree is only fingertips away.

Reaching the top of the corporate ladder however is no piece of cake but it won’t take very long for hardworking people with integrity, commitment and consistency. The next step however is what can be done to help improve the opportunities for those young adults that are willing to go the extra mile to achieve their goals. We need the support from Government, a system, strategy or a further educational vocational plan that can help put young Caymanians in positions where they can climb the corporate ladder and not keep hitting the glass ceiling that exists for many Caymanians in our own country. We need to communicate with the business community and ask them what they want from the Caymanian workforce and moreover the private sector would do well to work more closely with the schools and colleges to design training programmes that will create the graduates they need.

We need to start a program in schools, from the very first year of high school.

Students could be encouraged to try a variety of different skills such as mechanics, engineering, architectural design, woodshop, information technology and art. Then in the last two years, they will have an idea of what they enjoyed doing or what they were good at and help them in deciding what they want to be or what field of profession they would like to train towards.

The student population is the next generation of leaders as well as workers and we need to help advance our youngsters towards facing the demands of Cayman’s modern work force.

We need to help set up workshops that young people can attend and then develop their specific talents and advance their career opportunities during the school year, perhaps as an after-school program. Such a scheme would serve a dual purpose. Not only would this help young people focus on their future but it would also give them something constructive to do to occupy their time.

Training and education of any kind is important, but for young people to really begin to reach the top levels of our business community we need to ensure that the education and training on offer is geared towards real career opportunities.

Reader comments can be made in confidence at civoice@hotmail.com.

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