BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – THIRTEEN members of the staff of Kajola Kristada Ltd. (KK) were, on Friday Aug. 19, presented with certificates for their hard work and accomplishments at the first ever Kajola Kristada School Graduation Ceremony.
The ceremony was held at the company’s location at the Industrial Site, and it saw family, friends and well wishers all coming out to celebrate with the graduates their passing of several courses, namely, Microsoft Excel Courses, Lean 101, and Six Sigma Yellow Belt and Green Belt Certification.
The guest speaker for the ceremony was Douglas Wattley, owner of the Centre for Professional Learning and Development (CPLD). He spoke on the importance of learning and of the benefits organisations acquire on training their staff.
“Learning is not reserved for the privileged few. Everyone has the capacity to learn. Everyone has the right to learn,” he said.
“I am not sure that many of us understand how important training is to the development of employees. If you continually train employees, they will not only learn, they will surprise you with the level of performance they deliver on the job,” he also said.
He congratulated the graduates and encouraged other organisations to take a page from Kajola Kristada’s book and make a commitment to train their staff.
General Manager of KK, Jose Rosa, in congratulating the graduates, expressed how happy he was to be celebrating what he described as the first of many graduation ceremonies.
“All of you are pioneers in this new adventure that we call ‘The KK School’. I know it has taken time out of your regular schedule to complete these courses but it showed commitment and the desire to continue improving your knowledge and understanding to meet the new challenges that you face every working day,” he told the graduates.
He explained that the school is the platform used to provide the mechanisms for achieving their goals and that he strongly believes that an educated workforce is an asset which delivers strength to an organization and paves the road to increase flexibility – a vital element for growth of the organization.
“This is one of the ways that we make sure we provide opportunity for career advancement to all our employees.” He said.
Graduates of the Microsoft Excel Courses were Adelaide Francis, Malvie James, Faith Caines, Octavia Richards, and Dawn Poujade.
Lean 101 graduates were Malvie James, Sheldon Abbott, Charles Hudson, Beulah Belle, Valerie Gordon-Adams, Naressa Wilson, Omar Christopher, Faith Caines, and Deborah Casson.
Six Sigma Yellow and Green Belt graduates included Octavia Richards, Kevin Taylor, Adelaide Francis, Malvie James, Valerie GordonAdams, and Naressa Wilson – Yellow Belt, Adelaide Francis , Octavia Richards, Dawn Poujade, Kevin Taylor, and Malvie James – Green Belt.
Six Sigma is a business management strategy that was originally developed by Motorola in the year 1986. The Six Sigma process teaches the practitioner to improve the quality of his/her process outputs by detecting or identifying the root causes of errors and removing them. It also teaches one how to minimize variability in the business and manufacturing processes.
The Six Sigma certification is based on a set of methods for quality management which includes statistical methods. These projects are carried out within an organization in a proper and precise manner by following a series of defined steps. These have their own individual quantified financial targets.
Lean is the term used to describe the production systems and methods developed by the Toyota Company in the post war years. Lean comes about by focusing on the reduction of the non-valued activities within the organisation.
Lean is all about achieving more value by applying fewer resources more effectively and efficiently through the continuous elimination of non-valued activities regarded as waste.
Editor's Note: SKNVibes would like to apologise to Ms Dawn Poujade whose name was originally written as "Darren" when the article was first posted. This was merely due to a wrong interpretation of the written list provided (which was written in cursive and not printed). We regret any humiliation this might have caused you. Thank you for pointing it out to us.
SKNVibes extends an apology to Dawn Poujade whose name was originally spelt "Darren" in this article. This was due to a wrong interpretation of the writing (which was in cursive) by our reporter. We wish to assure Ms Poujade that we regret the error and we regret any humiliation that may have been caused as a result. Thank you for pointing it out to us. Editor
