ICT Innovations In Mas (I3M) Project

For the last few weeks, I have been attending training as part of the I3M project. 

What is the I3M Project?

The proposed project seeks to contribute strengthening and promoting economic growth in the micro; small and medium size businesses in the Masquerade sector. To facilitate increased economic participation of MSMEs in the masquerade sector in the global business of Carnival, the project will equip these enterprises with skills and capacity as well as access to ICT solutions including a web-based platform, the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival HUB as a mechanism for improving and expanding business processes, business models and market reach and strengthening competitiveness.

You can read more about it HERE.

The training is held at the TTSCI's offices and so far it has been really informative. The first part of training was conducted by NEDCO and covering: Inventory Management, Financial Management, Writing a Business Plan.

The second part of the training was conducted by exporTT, and this covered: Fundamentals of Exporting, Formulating an Export Plan, Market Access-Exploring your International Opportunities and we are ending this month's training with Value Chain and Quality Standards for the Masquerade Industry.

Some of the best sessions have been those where the trainer catered the session to specifically address the needs of the masquerade industry and not just the generic by the book information.

To my surprise, Boots by Afro Chic was even featured in one of the presenter's sessions as an example of promoting your business on social media!

I'm really looking forward to the last session, and implementing some of what I've learned over the last two months.

Kicking Cancer's Ass!

"I cannot do the biopsy, there is nothing there"
Those were the words of my son's surgeon when he went in last week to get a sample to biopsy of the 'mass' that they had seen on his PET scan. 

The only thing I did not do was a backflip and shout WOOT! WOOT! in the waiting room of the operating theatre.

My son had a very invasive surgery done called a thoracotomy to come to this conclusion, but he is now at home recovering. 

He has a 10 year follow up programme. For the first year when re-occurrence is highest, he has to go to this oncologist every month and do a CT scan every 6 months. In the second year, he has to go every other month, third year every three months and so on. So he will be a man of 22 when his follow up is completed.

Needless to say our family is extremely happy, and can;t wait to have him back to 100%!