NGC has always shown commitment to giving to our Nation’s youth through both direct and indirect involvement with schools and school based programmes. This interest in schools takes on a number of different forms, from participation in career guidance fairs, visits to schools in project impacted communities, providing assistance with SBA projects to other academic related activities.

In recent years NGC has visited a large number of schools in NGC project impacted communities to educate students about NGC, natural gas, the natural gas industry and natural gas and pipeline safety. For 2008, the company will continue this initiative in the primary and secondary schools of the Cumuto/Tamana and Diamond Vale areas where we will be constructing natural gas pipelines. We have already delivered power point presentations to the staff and students of Coryal High School and we are planning to visit four primary schools within the Cumuto/Tamana community. We will visits schools in Diamond Vale during the new school term in September as this is closer to the start of the pipeline project in that area.

In 2007, we developed a new tool which we are using in career guidance fairs. We introduced the concept of ‘multiple intelligences’ to students across the country, for them to use as a guide to understand and recognize their areas of strengths, natural abilities and skills. This will in turn open up to them new ideas for future career and education paths that may best suit their particular way of learning. We also ask students to fill out a questionnaire to guide them in determining which one of the intelligences best describes them. On Friday 6^th June, NGC visited the students at Mayaro Composite School where they viewed a poster display of the nine different intelligences of the ‘multiple intelligences’ concept and filled out the questionnaire.

Students and schools have been increasingly using NGC and its operations as the basis for the study in their School Base Assessment (SBA) projects. The students visit the head office located at the Point Lisas Industrial Estate and NGC personnel speak to them on the subject area they wish to cover. The students are also taken on to a bus tour of the Point Lisas Industrial Estate to allow them to see first hand some of the infrastructure of the energy industry in Trinidad and Tobago. For the year the following schools visited NGC and received assistance with SBA projects:

• Marabella Senior Comprehensive School - 6th From Accounts
• Tableland High School - 5th Form Principles of Business and Geography
• Lakshmi Girls Hindu School - 4th Form Geography
• St. George's College - 6th Form Science
• St. Augustine Community College - 6th Form Science
• UWI Corrosion Science Students
• Mafeking Government Primary School - Std. 5 Geography