PADF training coming for young Vincentians

Up to 100 young persons from three communities in St Vincent and the Grenadines are to be trained in resilient livelihoods, strengthening disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

The training will come from the Pan American Development Fund (PADF), {{more}}in collaboration with a number of local stakeholders, with funding from the Republic of China on Taiwan, and will see the trainees develop skills that would enable them and their communities to reduce and respond to risks associated with natural hazards and climate change.

At the launch of the project at Grenadine House on Tuesday, October 21, local project coordinator Christobelle Ashton said that apart from the disaster preparedness training, the project also aims to equip the participants, who will range 18-26 years old, with proficiencies that would enable to serve themselves and their communities.

“Our project aims to promote youth as active agents of change in their lives and in their communities and to promote economically, socially and environmentally sustainable livelihoods that provide appropriate jobs to unemployed youth,” Ashton said.

“We would also have apprenticeship training for all of these young people and we hope to have three community projects in each of the three communities; this would be done in conjunction with the communities that they would be working in.

“We hope to have as well, all of the youth placed in apprenticeships with the hope that some would have jobs out of these apprenticeships.”

Ashton identified the three communities to be addressed as Georgetown on the country’s Windward coast, Cumberland in North Leeward, and Paget Farm on the Grenadine island of Bequia.

She said that these three areas were vulnerable to natural disasters, and in the case of Paget

Farm, it was one of the least economically advantaged on the island.

Ashton also indicated her hope to have more projects conducted, following the completion of this initial venture, which is expected to culminate in October 2015.

Following the December 2013 flooding here, NEMO was approached by the PADF enquiring about ways the organization could assist in getting communities affected by the storm back to normalcy.

After some brief dialogue, the necessary plans were put in place, and a PADF office was opened in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

The office is headed by Ashton, with Devon Wright its Finance and Administrative officer.

Along with NEMO, the PADF has partnered with the Ministry of National Mobilization etc, National Parks, the Forestry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the St Vincent and the Grenadines Red Cross Society, and Marion House, among others, to offer training and apprenticeship to the trainees.

Also speaking at the launch of the project were Taiwanese Ambassador Baushaun Ger, Minister of Foreign Affairs Camillo Gonsalves, NEMO director Howie Prince, and Caterina Velero and Liza Mantilla of the PADF head office in Washington, DC. (JJ)