Some of the participants attending yesterday's media breakfast, hosted by the Strengthening Human and Social Development in Barbados Project Execution Unit.
Efforts are under way to improve collaboration between all the institutions which provide assistance to the poor.
Maureen Pollard, coordinator of the ‘Strengthening Human and Social Development in Barbados’ Project of the Ministry of Social Care, Constituency Empowerment and Community Development, explained that they are hoping such an improvement will be one of the outcomes of the five-year project, so as to ensure there is a smoother way of making the essential resources available to those in need.
She was speaking yesterday morning during a media breakfast meeting at Almond Bay, to sensitise the local media on the various ways they can assist in making the US$10 million project a
success.
Pollard explained that the project is divided into three components – an expansion of the ISEE Bridge Programme; the strengthening of labour market policies to address the needs of unemployed persons through career counselling and technical
training and retraining; and enhancing institutional capacity through a Management Information System. The latter component, she said, will allow them to track cases as persons move through the social safety net system, ensuring there is no duplication. She said that in general they hope to see harmonisation in the way they do business, to prevent persons having to go to various places for assistance.
“The objective then is to seek to contribute to the reduction of extreme poverty and unemployment in Barbados and as I indicated, we are doing the first objective through the expansion of the current ISEE Bridge Programme, which caters to about 30 households now, and we are looking to move to 250 households spread right across Barbados,” she said.
Pollard added, “We are seeking to reduce unemployment through improving the quality of service provided through the National Employment Bureau, and the Ministry of Labour will be rebranding the National Employment Bureau, to be called now the Barbados Employment and Career Counselling Service. Very often the NEB was looked at as the place you went for those farm labour type programmes, but they do a lot more than that, and the aim is to move them more into the area of career counselling, as they build relationships with the training institutions to provide technical training.”
She added that focus is also being placed on youth unemployment, and they will be targeting persons between the ages of 16 and 30. Her comments came as she explained that the overall aim at the end of the project is to see movement towards breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty in this country. (JRT)