SVG Coalition of Service Industries attends regional training programme

Caribbean service providers will soon benefit from a regional export training programme designed to assist service firms in improving their competitiveness and achieving success in the global marketplace. {{more}}

The advent of globalization and technology has made it possible for small service providers across all services sectors to export their services. This includes the region’s priority sectors of: business and professional services, health and wellness, creative industries and information and communication technology, amongst others. There are countless opportunities for these small firms, which will now have the opportunity to learn about the steps necessary for entering new markets through the SERVICES Go Global training programme.

SERVICES Go Global, an instructor-led, competency based export training programme for service providers, was introduced last week to a team of regional trainers during the programme’s train-the-trainers workshop. From September 22 to September 24, 30 pre-qualified, regional trainers and representatives from national Coalitions of Service Industries (CSIs) met in Barbados to review the programme and discuss its implementation. 

SERVICES Go Global is the only export readiness training programme for services exporters and would-be exporters in the world. The programme follows a logical, sequenced approach to exporting – a roadmap – that takes the exporters through four stages and 12 modules of export preparation. With the completion of each module, elements of the service provider’s export plan are developed. Service providers who undertake the course will come away having completed the essential elements of their export plan and will have gained the valuable skills necessary to successfully engage in the international marketplace.

“SERVICES Go Global is a timely and comprehensive training programme for service exporters, but it is the element of the services-tailored Export Plan that I find most exciting and relevant, as I’m sure will the participants of this course,” shared Suzanne Joachim, a well-experienced trainer from St Vincent and the Grenadines. Other participants echoed Joachim’s sentiments, that the course will not only prove valuable to service providers across the region, but has enhanced their own export efforts in the process.

The programme was developed and delivered by Global Links Network, a team of certified international trade professionals who have delivered services training in over 50 countries worldwide over the past 20 years. The development of the programme and the hosting of the train-the-trainers workshop have been made possible with the support of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Caribbean Export Development Agency.

SERVICES Go Global will be delivered by authorized trainers on behalf of national CSIs and will be launched in early 2015 across the Caribbean, including Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The three representatives from St Vincent and the Grenadines Coalition of Service Industries are Suzanne Joachim, Donald Wood and D’Andre’ Jackson, the project associate.