 Soon, new TVET subjects will be offered at secondary schools island-wide, as teachers engage in a series of workshops, get towards expanding capacity in existing subjects, and new subjects to be offered. The Trained Teacher-Teacher Immersion program is one of the initiatives under the multi-faceted World Bank-financed St. Lucia Human Capital Resilience Project, which ultimately seeks to strengthen the resilience of St. Lucia's human capital stock by strengthening the TVET system capacity to respond to the quickly changing labour market demands. According to Deputy Chief Education Officer Dawson Raghunanan, the teacher immersion program will widen options for students to choose alternative career paths, which will in the long run seek to reduce unemployment and promote higher productivity among young people. This is really a project that takes a multi-prong approach to address the issues of poverty, vulnerability, to shocks, and also the whole idea of youth unemployment. We want to ensure that our youth and our young people continue to be prepared for the world of work, and more than that, we want to ensure that they get value in coming to schools and that the value that is provided for them will help them as they leave, as they graduate into the working world, that they would be able to get the kinds of jobs that they need, that they would find themselves equipped and well occupied in industries so that they can make a meaningful contribution to the society and the economy of the nation. Carpentry and joining instructor at the Centre for Adolescent Renewal and Education Care, Sharon Butcher says programs like these and tapping into the secondary schools to offer more trades will go a long way in meeting the demands and the shortfall in certain skilled and technical areas. When you look at St. Lucia, we are short of upholsters in St. Lucia. Now taking that skill into the secondary school, at least if not everybody, but at least maybe 10 to 20, might be able to do upholstery. So it's a good initiative. Hydroponics, upholstery and patterns drafting with the subjects of focus for this round of the teacher immersion program. What we want to do is to bridge that gap between the schooling, between the training and the industry so that they would at least have the kinds of skills, they would also have the kinds of attitudes that are needed. So our teachers are backing on a program for the last two weeks they've been doing that, focusing on a number of areas like hydroponics for example. They've been looking at pattern making, they've been looking at what is called the HASA program, which is about safety in foods. And so our teachers are going to actually get certification. So they themselves, they're going to have persons, there will be persons from industry providing the training, facilitating those programs so that our teachers as they get ready to go back into the schools, they would be well equipped. More training will be offered to teachers as the five-year human capital resilience project rolls out. From the communications unit of the Ministry of Education, Sustainable Development, Innovation, Science, Technology and Vocational Training, I am Daniel Du Bois reporting.