BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – IN an effort to enhance the skills and capabilities of its volunteers, the St. Kitts and Nevis Chapter of the Peace Corps conducted a workshop yesterday (Feb. 19) at the Foundation for National Development’s offices in Bladen Commercial Development.
Twenty-seven Peace Corps volunteers and their community partners attended the workshop, which was aimed at improving their proposal-writing skills for funding from donor organisations.
The workshop was facilitated by Permanent Secretary in Public Sector Reform, Douglas Wattley.
Wattley noted that the participants underwent training in several areas including the formulation of vision statements, situational analyses, risk assessments, gender analyses, stakeholder analyses, and budgeting.
According to the Associate Peace Corps Director for St. Kitts and Nevis, Mavis Huggins, the workshop was a component of the volunteers’ in-service training; an initiative which assesses their development and progress over the time they have spent in the volunteer capacity.
The newest batch of volunteers arrived in the Federation in August last year.
Huggins revealed that, normally, the in-service training would be limited to volunteers only. However, due to the insistence of the volunteers, their community partners were included in the activity. The community partners are those persons and organisations that the volunteers interact with on the projects they are involved in.
“Some of these partners include representatives from the Blind and Disabled Persons Association and the National Skills Training Project. The response has just been overwhelming.
“The volunteers will develop competencies in proposal-writing and will work with their counterparts to prepare project proposals and to help them develop projects. Each participant today is working on a proposal they or their organisation is interested in.
“They’re being guided through the process as it is being taught to them. Each person who leaves will have to submit a proposal they created,” Huggins said.
