At the Thirty-eighth Meeting of the Conference of the Heads of State and Government being convened in St Georges, Grenada from 4-6 July 2017, the Hon. Shawn Richards, Minister of Education et al in his capacity as Chair of the CARICOM Commission on Human Resource Development (HRD) presented the HRD2030 Strategy.
The Strategy is the outcome of a mandate, emanating from the Twenty-fifth Intercessional Meeting in February 2014 following a presentation by the HRD Cluster of CARICOM institutions which highlighted the situation in the region and made some recommendations for such a Strategy.
In March 2017, the Council for Human and Social Development COHSOD) approved the Strategy, and outlined sixteen(16) key priorities and related outputs.
Two principal components of the Strategy are:
1) Strategic Direction – addresses where the Region is headed
2) Strategic implementation – outlines how the direction will be accomplished.
The goals of the Strategy are three fold:
-Empowers our people and contributes to the development of the attributes of the Ideal Caribbean Person
-Establishes a globally competitive system comprising three distinct sectors, namely basic education, lifelong learning and tertiary education sectors
– Eliminates inefficiencies in the planning, management and delivery in HRD Sectors
Funding from the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has made possible the Implementation,Planning and Monitoring and Evaluation Framework.
The Conference commended the Commission and expressed appreciation to Minister Richards for his presentation.
After the presentation and comments from heads, the Conference was asked to endorse the CARICOM HRD 2030 Strategy and commit to implementation of the Strategy. Both actions were taken.