Charlestown, Nevis, October 31, 2018 (S.T.E.P.) — Desirous to have the youth in the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis properly equipped on joining the job market, Team Unity Administration in 2017 launched Skills Training Empowerment Programme (STEP) a government agency under Office of the Prime Minister to replace the People Employment Programme (PEP).
“The STEP as the acronym indicates is a skills training empowerment programme where we actually provide attachment for training or we actually train persons in certain skills, electricity, air conditioning, landscaping and so on, offering a wide range of skills,” said Mr Wendell Wattley, STEP Director.
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The Team Unity Administration has contracted the services of Dr Neals Chitan, President of Motiv-8 For Change International, who has been taking STEP environmental workers (landscapers) through a series of sessions on social skill empowerment that will earn them a Canadian Social Skill Certificate.
Dr Chitan has conducted the Social Skill Empowerment Programme sessions with STEP community clean-up crews on St. Kitts, and has recently shifted focus and has started offering the same sessions to STEP environmental workers on the island of the Nevis.
The first session of the Social Skill Empowerment Programme with environmental workers in Nevis was held on Thursday October 4, with a group of STEP environmental workers who cover the area Charlestown to Gingerland. On Thursday October 18 Dr Chitan had the first session with the group that covers the St. Thomas Parish.
The session with the St. Thomas STEP environmental workers was held at the Cotton Ground Community Centre. Mr Bernel Hanley, Manager STEP Nevis, welcomed the team of STEP Director Mr Wendell Wattley, Dr Neals Chitan, and the Motiv-8 For Change International Administrative Assistant Mrs Patsy Chitan.
“Dr Chitan has been with us when we went around the whole of St. Kitts with the landscaping/clean-up/environmental groups and he will share some things with you as a result of his sharing with those persons,” said Mr Wattley while introducing Dr Chitan. “I myself have heard some very good things coming out of his presentations from the St. Kitts side.”
Dr Neals Chitan, an International Social, Crime Reduction Consultant, and motivational speaker, told the workers that at the end of the sessions, they would get the certificate which specifies that the holder has attended and completed the Canadian Social Skill Empowerment Programme in collaboration with the St. Kitts-Nevis Skills Training Empowerment Programme (STEP).
According to Dr Chitan, while the Chamber of Commerce has assisted the programme financially, the certificates the participants will earn at the end of the sessions will not guarantee employment with any of the Chamber of Commerce members.
He however observed that with members of the chamber knowing of the intentions of his organisation’s programmes, any individual who can show by means of a certificate of completion that they have gone through the social skill empowerment programme it will greatly increase their chances of getting employment with those businesses.
