Basseterre, St. Kitts, March 11, 2020 (SKNIS): The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) is supporting CARICOM Member States and Associate Members to convene a broad based consultation to inform the developments of the results-focused 2020 CARICOM Strategic Plan.
One such national consultation was held on March 12 at the Department of Technology (National ICT Centre), in St. Kitts, to review the proposed results based CARICOM Strategic Plan 2020 and introduce the communications campaign entitled “I am CARICOM”.
The new strategic plan will among other things serve to define the direction of the Caribbean Community over the plan’s horizon, keep implementing partners focused and lay out the strategies to secure the future in a dynamic and often challenging global environment.
Participating in the discussions were stakeholders from all sectors including the public, private and non-profit. Representation came from senior public officers and policymakers, the business community, religious and faith-based organisations, academia, labour unions, youth ambassadors, community-based and civil organisations and citizens of the Community. They consulted on issues related to the regional integration and development agenda.
Craig Beresford, Strategic Management Director of the CARICOM Secretariat stated that at the time when the Conference of Heads of Government (CHOG) mandated the Development of the Community Strategic Plan 2015-2019, the Heads further mandated that, moving forward, the work of the Community should always be informed by a Community Strategic Plan.
“Hence, the Community has embarked on the development of the successor strategic plan 2020, and your purpose here today is to contribute to that process in a meaningful way,” he said.
Mr. Beresford said that the “I am CARICOM” communications campaign is being rolled out across the community to engage all stakeholders, including its citizenry, to embrace and adopt the new results-focused community strategic plan for 2020.
“The plan seeks to strengthen our CARICOM identity and the spirit of the community by raising individual awareness that CARICOM is about all of us as citizens of the community,” he said. “As a community, we are responsible for charting the course of our future and for ensuring that we leave this region better than we found it, for our children and their children.”
Mr. Beresford stated that the community strategic plan is a guiding and facilitating tool to advance national progress in all member states, as well as deliver on regional public goods for the benefit of all citizens of the community.
He highlighted that the resilience model adopted for the community strategic plan was specifically designed to “address member states’ vulnerability to natural disasters and the effects of climate change, by building our resilience to external shocks, both natural and manmade.”
“While the implementation period for the 2015-2019 strategic plan has elapsed, the need for the community to build social, economic, technological and environmental resilience remains acutely relevant,” said the director. “It is relevant because some of the issues, priorities and challenges that existed in 2015, still exist today and we must continue to address them in this successor strategic plan.”
