Youth Development Centre facing budget, capacity limitations

SOME 227 of 379 applicants have been selected to pursue the youth development programme at the Youth Development Centre.

During the registration ceremony yesterday, Head of the Youth Development Centre Hjh Fatimah PP Hj Mohd Salleh said that a number of the applicants had to be turned down due to capacity and budget limitations.

Almost 80 per cent of the applicants applied for the Computer and Office Administration and the Cooking and Catering courses with 186 and 93 applicants respectively.

Hjh Fatimah said that more than half of the applicants for the two courses had to be offered a course of their second or third choice.

She said that the centre only had the capacity to accommodate 50 students for each course.

Due to the capacity constraints of the popular courses, many of the applicants opted for the Cake and Pastry course, which also reached its maximum capacity.

The selected students have fulfilled the requirements and also received excellent evaluations from their interviews and entrance examinations, said Hjh Fatimah. She added that their family backgrounds were also taken into consideration.

Statistics by the Youth Development Centre on graduates from 1996 to 2008 have shown that 68 per cent of the centre's graduates are now working in the government or the private sectors, while three per cent of the students have started their own business.

However, 17 per cent of the graduates are still looking for employment.

The courses are 18 months long and comprises three different programmes, the skills training programme and the self-development programme. Through the skills training programme, the students will be taught skills from the courses they were allocated to, whilst the self-development programme will teach the students academic subjects such as Accounting, English and Mathematics, as well as management courses such as self-discipline.

Islamic religious activities are also incorporated into the programme.

After completing the programmes, the trainees will spend another nine months on the work placement programme, which aims to give the students a hands on experience in their chosen field. The programme is also hoped to give students knowledge on how to manage working life in the future.

Hjh Fatimah told the students to realise their full potential during their training programme.

The Brunei Times