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| CARICOM Consultant Robert Dabney. |
Basseterre, St. Kitts (April 09, 2006): St. Kitts and Nevis participated in a two-day regional workshop held in the Dominican Republic to review the progress of the PANCAP/CARICOM Mini-Grant Programme.
The four-member delegation, headed by outgoing CARICOM Youth Ambassador (CYA) Pierre Liburd were joined by 45 other stakeholders from the CYA programme and related organizations involved in the mini-grant - which seeks to build the capacity of young people in addressing the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
These countries stretched as far as the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos in the north to Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname in the south. Representatives from 16 countries attended. Agencies represented at the April 3 to 4, workshop included CARICOM, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and GTZ.
Robert Dabney, a consultant with CARICOM, told SKNIS that this meeting was critical for St. Kitts and Nevis considering the first phase for the project has been completed. Training and project submissions from groups make up the first phase while implementation and evaluation is detailed in the second.
"I think St. Kitts is now ideally positioned to move into the next phase where they begin to implement the programmes," he said. "They have had an opportunity to meet with their counterparts from around the region and talk about the strength of the programme and the challenges they face and things that need to be improved."
Dabney admitted that there has been a number of challenges in piloting the mini-grant programme in the six original
countries. "It has not gone as quickly as we like but that is far overshadowed by the positives," he stressed, citing the capacity building of persons trained under the community mapping, HIV/AIDS sensitization, project proposal writing and monitoring and evaluating exercises. Mention was also made of the funds available for sustaining projects in the Federation after the first year.
The CARICOM consultant had high praise for persons involved in implementing the project locally.
"I really want to congratulate the mini-grant programme technical working group (local implementing body), the Youth Department, and all of the people in St. Kitts who have worked so hard over the last five months," Dabney noted. "We've had some challenges but thanks to the work of the CARICOM Youth Ambassadors Pierre Liburd and Khalea Robinson we have been able to overcome the challenges we've had and have been able to make sure that the St. Kitts Mini-Grant Programme will be one of the shining stars in the Caribbean."
Two separate projects have been prepared by local groups, under this programme, to address HIV/AIDS related issues in East Basseterre and the area between Saddlers to Molineux. The projects are expected to be executed in the first half of the year.
