The recently handed-over $5.5 million Industrial Arts Centre in Yupukari will present the community with the opportunity of equipping its young people with the skills needed to tap into the growing market for the provision of products and services.
The centre is the second of its kind in the Rupununi and, just like the first, was funded by the New Zealand High Commission Head of Mission Fund (HOMF).
According to a release from HOMF, the centre is easily accessible to Lethem where construction activity has been booming since the opening of the Takutu Bridge between Brazil and Guyana.
The previous industrial arts centre in Yupukari had been a popular and successful operating unit and had provided furniture for the local community and village nature lodge. However, the community had been constrained by the limitations of the existing facility.
These limitations saw the migration of many young people of Yupukari, an issue now addressed with the new centre.
“The goal of the project is to try and stop our young people leaving our community,” Toshao Rudolph Roberts Snr said. He continued, “The new centre will provide high-quality vocational training and income generation opportunities and also allow them [residents] to participate and contribute to the development of their own community.”
Deputy Toshao Brian Duncan further said, “We hope that this initiative will be an example for other community developments in the future; local skill paired with the correct level of technical support is essential for communities to complete and manage these programmes in a sustainable way.”
The new centre focuses on carpentry and joinery skills and boasts a renovated building, new additional wood storage facility, and generator house with electrical power tools imported from the USA.
It also has other necessary equipment, tools, and accessories that will allow for efficient operations, competitive with other professional carpentry enterprises in the region.
The centre will be operated by Cecil Mandook and Combrencent Ernest, two senior project team members involved in its development.
According to Michael Martin, the project coordinator, the community successfully coordinated the project between several other ongoing initiatives.
