Forty-one summer interns return to school with life skills training

Section of classroom setting where life skills training session was being conducted.

BASSETERRE, ST. KITTS, AUGUST 20, 2012 (Customs PRO) – Customs and Excise Department has conducted life skills training with the forty-one summer interns who will soon return to school after two months of work experience with the department.

The course was comprised of sessions that covered topics and concepts such as an introduction to Customs and Excise, note taking, drug abuse resistance, coping with peer pressure, professionalism in the workplace, respect and the chain of command and time and money managements.

Customs has committed to the internship work experience programme for senior high school and college students for more than twenty years, however this year the new feature of skills training has been added so that the interns may benefit from life, social and business skills that were imparted in these sessions.

Course facilitators included Mrs. Janet Harris, Financial Secretary in the Federal Government; Mr. Georid Belle, Deputy Comptroller of Customs; Mr. Theodore Brown, Assistant Comptroller of Customs with responsibility for Training; Mr. Larry Vaughan, P.R.O. and Customer Service Representative of Customs and Excise; and Inspector Lyndon David, Public Relations Officer of the Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force.

Miss Kerlyn Williams, one of the summer interns and an undergraduate student at Barry University, Florida said, “The training was the perfect addition to the internship programme”. Williams, like some of her other colleagues, commented that “the topics hit the nail on the head”.

Customs internship programmes are undertaken twice yearly – that is during the summer and Christmas school vacations.