Apr 19, 2013

ITVET holds annual open day and fight night

The Institute for Technical and Vocational Education and Training in Belize City today hosted its annual open day. It’s an event designed to showcase the talents and achievements of the students enrolled at the institution, and also serves to sell the school and its programs to the many students who attend the open day each year. Freelance reporter Mike Rudon stopped in at the campus and has the story.

Mike Rudon, Reporting

Hundreds of students from different schools walked the ITVET campus in Belize Citytoday, checking out the classroom setting and also the items set out on display by students of the institution.

Kenroy Ellis

Kenroy Ellis, Manager, ITVET

“It’s a day where the trainees showcase the skills that they’ve learnt over the past year. Today is special because we are emphasizing entrepreneurship. As a matter in fact, this morning, the keynote speaker was somebody from BELTRAIDE giving remarks on behalf of BELTRAIDE and the whole issue of small business development in Belize.”

According to Ellis, more than two hundred students attend the school, either full time or on the part-time program offered to students of other high schools. He says that ITVET has a lot to offer, and has even customized programs to meet the needs of students.

Kenroy Ellis

“There’s a lot to be seen. As I said, today we are focusing on small business and we have one or two of our past graduate students who are currently running business that are successful. So we are highlighting them as part of our day. Aside from our other programs that we offer: we have dining experiences, we have a hotel section that we have open and we also have or workshop block which are the traditional programs that we offer: AC and Refrigeration Repair, Electrical and Automotive. We do a lot of customized training and these are programs where mainly persons who are currently working in industry would contact ITVET and ask us to please run a program for them. For instance in the area of AC and Refrigeration, we’ve had companies send like ten participants to come back in the evening to do training for their company. Another popular program is tour-guiding. We are looking to run at least three tour-guiding programs for this year.”

And perhaps one of the most attractive programs offered by the ITVET is job placement after graduation from the institution.

Kenroy Ellis

“We do have an officer on board whose job is specifically to do job placement. That is besides; all of our trainees need to do one month on the job training in industry. But after that if they don’t get a job, then this officer is responsible for placing them in some type of employment.”

Mike Rudon

“What kind of success have you seen with that job placement?

Kenroy Ellis

“Well the success has been steady and hence the reason why we are looking at other ventures, other avenues. We want to give students an opportunity not to only get employed, but to become an entrepreneur. We’ve had a lot of strategic plans in this venture and so we believe that it is definitely the way to go. We recognize that small and medium enterprises in Belize, have contributed a lot to our GDP and so we want to go along those lines.”

Mike Rudon for News Five.

http://edition.channel5belize.com/archives/84449