USAID partners share on progress made in region

The US Embassy in Barbados recently held a USAID’s Partners Meeting at the Courtyard by Marriott Hotel to hear from USAID’s implementing partners about their work throughout the region, and to also hear directly from the beneficiaries of those programmes. A reception and walk through the booths or “Gallery Walk” also formed part of the event.

Ambassador of the United States to Barbados, the Eastern Caribbean and the OECS, Her Excellency Linda Taglialatela, shared with The Barbados Advocate the idea behind such an interactive event.

“USAID sponsors a number of programmes, some of them having to do with early childhood education and youth at risk, and (they are) helping to develop programmes that will help (young people) to find other avenues and to help them train to have jobs,” the Ambassador explained.

“We are also are doing things on climate resilience. The United States has a big programme that we have been working on with our Caribbean partners on resilience and we just donated US$3.5 million to help develop the resilience programme. So today we brought together the people that have been working on these projects and the idea is, we are getting ready to figure out what our next five-year strategy is going to be and what programmes we need to focus on in each of these areas,” she added.

“So we brought together a number of our partners and we asked them to sit down and talk to us about what is working, what is not working, what kinds of things they would like to see in the next five years, where we need to go so that we can sit down in the next week or so and really work on the strategy that will lay out a plan for the next five years and figure out how we will go about implementing it,” the Ambassador further explained.

Clinton White, USAID Regional Representative for the Eastern and Southern Caribbean, also explained the rationale behind the USAID Partners Meeting.

“We have been holding a two-day event here, looking at our partners as well as our beneficiaries. This is actually an event to look at what we have done over the last four to five years, our programmes and activities, what impact they have had throughout the Caribbean,” he stated.

“What we are trying to do here is to capture whether we have actually achieved and to hear not only from our implementing partners, but our beneficiaries, how our programmes have actually improved their lives and improved the countries we work in in the Caribbean. This will also prepare us for our next regional targets, which will cover us from the period 2021 to 2025,” White indicated.
(RSM)