Onward with YPARD Trinidad and Tobago

“It is apparent that social media is not confined to the corporate world. It has its place in agriculture, business, education and every other sector. Additionally, agriculture is not a primitive or decadent field. It sustains the human race providing opportunities for self-sufficiency, innovation and food security. Understanding these learning outcomes, the importance of agribusiness and how social media influences everything was simply nothing short of remarkable.” - Renaldo Singh, Content Contributor at Entrepreneur Life TT and participant of the Building your Social Currency Workshop 

We made an impact

By the end of YPARD T&T’s first social media training we could not have been prouder. Our participants truly were involved asking a multitude of questions and learning from each other. Some where even social media professionals themselves. 

One would wonder why a professional would attend an introductory course such as ours? 

It turns out that these professionals did not truly understand how social media can work for the agricultural sector. Their interest was piqued which resulted in their attendance and complete satisfaction of what they received in way of knowledge and understanding.

After the workshop, we put out a challenge to the participants asking them to write a blog post about the event. To date we have received three from Renaldo Singh and one from Nelsha Shillingford. Read on your own the feedback via the posts submitted;

1. Event Summary
2. Social Chickens vs. Eagles
3. Seduce your Audience with Blogging
4. Success in two days 

Why this was a milestone for us

This event was surely a leap forward in positive direction simply because we collaborated. Typically, in the Caribbean agribusiness sector it is difficult to coordinate and function in as government organizations and institutions alike face implantation issues. Why this occurs is due to several issues in terms of structure, policy, funding and economic issues. 

As a result there tends to be an overly competitive nature among entities in the local environment. At times this crosses over to the working world of young professionals.

However, the four of us, Enricka Julien of Ebites, Luke Smith of LukeSmithTv, Alpha Sennon of W.H.Y.Farm and Keron Bascombe of Tech4agri were able to coordinate this event which saw around 30 participants of varied backgrounds. 

As young professionals, we each have our own business or budding enterprise but by working together as members of YPARD, we can accomplish more, hence the theme of the training which was #collaboratenotcompete.

We owe special thanks to our facilitator Mr. Peter Casier without whom this event may not have taken place. It was after all his suggestion. The support he provided is what we look for from our mentors and those veterans of the local and regional agri- sector.

The next step

The four musketeers as Peter has named us are certainly striving for more. We are all busy, consumed with our responsibilities as young adults and as entrepreneurs.We are young professionals moving forward rather than students which we seem to be permanently perceived as. 

Despite all this, we intend to have additional training sessions in order to bring the power of social media to the Caribbean agriculture and related sectors. 

Plans are already in motion as social media experts in our own right we believe we can truly assist in taking the regional sector forward, through knowledge and communication, paving the way for other young professionals.