John Benjamin presents Kalin Griffin with a $2,500 scholarship cheque courtesy of UBS Bank
Cape Eleuthera, The Bahamas (20 July 2012)—For the second year in a row, the Cape Eleuthera Island School is providing on-the-job training and real world experience to Bahamian high school and college students through its expanded Bahamian Apprentice programme. This year the program welcomes four individuals who are learning skills from facilities maintenance, car and boat mechanical work, office administration, and other trades as they work along side the staff at the Cape Eleuthera Island School. The programme also contains a more scientifically-focused component with an apprenticeship available to one student from the College of the Bahamas’ (COB) Small Island Sustainability track.
Benjamin Williams, a graduate of Deep Creek Middle School (DCMS), and current student at The Pennington School in New Jersey will be an apprentice learning facilities maintenance. Jayneka Brown of Waterford will be learning house keeping and administrative work and is new to the programme this year. Joining the programme for the second year is Nicoya Taylor of Deep Creek (DCMS alumna) and current student at Flager Palm Coast High School. She will be training on administrative skills and working in The Island School’s office.
The programme is made possible through generous support from private donations and sponsorships given by local companies and individuals. This is the second year the apprentice programme has offered a scholarship to someone from COB’s Small Island Sustainability program. This year’s recipient, Ms. Whitney Knowles, is spending her summer working with scientists and researchers in the aquaculture and aquaponics projects at the Cape Eleuthera Institute (CEI). Her apprenticeship was made possible through a generous $2,500 donation given by UBS bank.
Ms. Knowles learned about The Island School and the work at CEI while enrolled in the JUMPSTART program at Anatol Rodgers High School, a programme designed to challenge motivated students to earn college credit before enrolling in college. It was then that she decided to pursue a path of marine science and sustainability that led her to earning the UBS scholarship and work at CEI this summer. When she goes back to Nassau in the fall, she “would like to return to the COB and help start up an aquaponics system there.”
