COME ABOARD

As the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade seeks to connect with the Barbadian diaspora and compile a database of such individuals, the Ministry has a new tagline for its competition intended to help reach out to those persons.

The announcement came recently in a brief prize giving presentation, which was held in the conference room of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. The new tagline – “Parish to Parish and Sea to Sea, We Gatherin’ fuh we”, was conceptualised by employees of the Research Unit of the Ministry of the Public Service – Rashida Rowe and Sheena Headley. They received a cheque for $1 000, compliments Republic Bank, which sponsored the competition that was open to employees across the public service.

Speaking at the presentation, Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Sandra Husbands said the diaspora competition is important to assist the ministry in making contact with Barbadians living abroad. Her comments came as she said that most Barbadians do not contact the embassies overseas unless there is a problem and so she said there are probably only about 10,000 persons who are actually registered as Barbadians with the embassies.

“But we know that we have hundreds of thousands more persons of Barbadian descent who belong to us, we are now into second, third and fourth generation Barbadians and some of them have not had the opportunity to bond and connect with us in the way the first generation would have had those experiences because they were born here... We need to reconnect with them,” she stated.

She added that the Ministry is relaunching the diaspora competition with the view of running a number of promotional ads on various media, inviting persons who have already registered to get others on board.

“Especially Barbadians coming home for the We Gatherin’, if they can help us to be able to find and locate our second, third and fourth generation Barbadians, then what we will have is an asset base. We can look at it and identify what are some of the things people wish to do, ways in which they want to help Barbados and ways in which they can help us export goods and services. One of the other critical things they would be able to do, is help us with political lobbying because they are there in capitals where decisions are being made that would affect us,” she said.

Meanwhile, Minister Husbands applauded those who participated in the tagline competition and Republic Bank for also coming on board without hesitation. Speaking on behalf of Republic Bank, its Marketing Officer/Communications, Sharon Howell offered heartiest congratulations to the winners.

“As Minister Husbands alluded earlier, it was a no brainer for Republic Bank, we are always interested in getting involved in community initiatives such as this. We are excited to come on board and provide this prize for you deserving young ladies,” she stated. (JRT)