Youth from across the Region as well as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) diaspora Monday evening got the opportunity to engage in a live social media interaction with the CARICOM Secretary General Ambassador Irwin LaRocque from 6:00 pm-8:00 pm. The event was hosted just before the Thirty-Sixth Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM in Barbados, which formally opens on Thursday and ends on Saturday.
The main topic for discussion was ‘Entrepreneurship: CARICOM’s Economic Life-jacket’. Other matters including the successes of CARICOM, the Haiti/Dominican Republic dispute and reparations also came up for discussion. With questions coming from as far as London, the level of engagement can be characterised as a success.
The initiative was organised and executed by the CARICOM Youth Ambassadors with leadership from Vice Dean for Communications, Kishore Shallow, and support from former CYA from Jamaica, Dwayne Gutzmer. Vice Dean for Regional Initiatives, Sade Jemmot, also played a crucial role in organising the event.
The Secretary General, in responding to the questions raised by the participants said that entrepreneurship was indeed the life-jacket for CARICOM’s economic survival. He said entrepreneurs should be allowed to flourish and their ideas should be allowed to blossom. He said considering that CARICOM governments were currently under such tight fiscal regimes that employment through traditional means was sometimes unavailable.
According to him, entrepreneurship among youth should be encouraged and pointed to the Creativity for Employment and Business Opportunity (CEBO) programme as an example of an initiative being pursued by CARICOM to encourage young people to think about possible business opportunities and ideas that they could explore.
The audience at the social media interaction in Bridgetown, Barbados on Monday evening.
Secretary General LaRocque said that for entrepreneurship to really be successful among youth, the ideas of children needed to be taken more seriously.
Too often parents don’t recognise good ideas in a child. Children have fantastic ideas! We should encourage them,” Ambassador LaRocque stated.
Speaking on the Haiti/Dominica issue Ambassador LaRocque said the Dominican Republic’s application to join CARICOM would be put on hold until the conflict has been resolved.
CARICOM will continue to reject what is happening in the DR, it is shameless and there is no excuse for that.” he said
