By Aabigayle McIntosh

The Department of Youth Empowerment Programme (YEEP) is set to introduce short courses, an expansion of its current offerings aimed at empowering young individuals.

According to Director Troy Allen, YEEP is diversifying its offerings and is poised to introduce specialized courses in fundamental culinary skills and customer service.

“We are also going to be having short courses in craft, helping our young unemployed individuals who are desirous of earning an income to be able to produce a certain number of products.

“As you know Tourism is our main industry, we are going to be focusing a lot on products that people can actually sell to our tourists,” Allen said.

In addition to this, students young and old, benefit from free Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advance Proficiency Examination (CAPE) classes.

The program, now in its 7^th year, recorded its highest passes to date with students passing most of their subjects during this year’s exams.

“Generally, we have an 80 percent pass rate in comparison to the last seven years. We have a 100 percent pass rate in Economics, Accounts, Physical Education and Sports, 89 percent in Office Administration, 88 percent in Principals of Business, 80 in Social Studies, and so on,” Allen said.

He said that based on those preliminary results YEEP would have outperformed secondary schools and learning centres on the island.

Allen said 196 students wrote the exams and of that number 80 percent passed.