Grenada and UNESCO: Caribbean Knowledge Societies

Building Caribbean Knowledge Societies: IFAP Conference in Grenada

Over 50 delegates from 13 Caribbean countries gathered for the First UNESCO Regional IFAP Conference in Saint George's, Grenada during the 15th and 17th June 2011. Under the theme "Building Caribbean Knowledge Societies", the Conference aimed to enable Caribbean countries to develop a realistic action plan that would address their development needs and foster the creation of knowledge societies in the region.

Introduction

The concept of Knowledge Societies is founded on the notion of societies which use information and communication tools and resources in a manner that is people-centered, inclusive, and equitable. In Knowledge Societies everyone can freely create, access, utilize, share and disseminate information and knowledge, so that individuals, communities, and peoples are empowered to improve their quality of life and to achieve their full potential.



International thinking about Knowledge Societies came to the fore during the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in 2003 and 2005, which set a series of related goals for 2015. The WSIS follow-up framework provides today a forum in which multiple stakeholders including international organizations, governments, the private sector and civil society can discuss the opportunities of the new information and communication environment.



This consultation will combine the WSIS multi-stakeholder approach with the Information For All Programme (IFAP), which is an intergovernmental body of UNESCO created in 2001 to foster the creation of Knowledge Societies in Member States. IFAP supports knowledge-based processes for attaining national development goals by elaborating and implementing national information policy frameworks in the following five priority areas: Information accessibility, Information for Development, Information Preservation, Information Literacy and Information Ethics. In addition, by disseminating best practices, supporting projects in IFAP’s priority areas and other strategic activities IFAP addresses Member States’ needs in this area.



The event, organized by UNESCO in collaboration with the Government of Grenada, featured the following topics:

• Concept of knowledge societies in the Caribbean context;



• Role of IFAP in building inclusive knowledge societies;



• Outcomes of the World Summit of Information Society (WSIS); and



• UNESCO's work in the follow-up to WSIS.

The delegates are expected to adopt a political declaration on building knowledge societies in the Caribbean and to develop an action plan that would address the specific needs of Caribbean countries in the framework of IFAP. Isidro Fernandez-Aballi, from UNESCO's Kingston Office, expressed his satisfaction over the fact that UNESCO facilitates a conference of such importance in the region. According to him, the time has come for Caribbean leaders to think strategically about building knowledge societies and creating a culture of information for all.



Special guests at the Conference included our Prime Minister of Grenada and Chairman of CARICOM, Tillman Thomas, and the President of the UNESCO General Conference, Davidson Hepburn.

Trying to close the digital divide in the Caribbean

For the second time in a month, a senior Grenada government official has appealed to the region to “fully embrace” Information Communication Technology (ICT) as a tool for the development of the Caribbean region.



Minister of Finance and Acting Prime Minister Nazim Burke on the 15th June 2011 told participants attending the UNESCO Building Caribbean Knowledge Societies Conference that ICT will empower all citizens of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to improve their quality of life and achieve their full potential.

“There is little doubt that Information Communication Technology acts as a vehicle in bringing services to our people where ever they are. These services include e-banking, e-government, e-learning and a gamut of people-centered interactions,” he said. “Even more importantly, ICT brings with it a myriad of opportunities for employment creation, innovation and entrepreneurship hitherto unimaginable in our region.”

“We cannot and must not wait to be pulled along, kicking and screaming, by the forces of globalization and international competition. ICT and its related benefits have been with us for far too long, for our small countries to lose this opportunity for forward movement,” Burke implored participants.

The two-day conference brought together policy makers, ICT experts, civil society representatives, international organizations and other industry leaders to identify the issues and concerns that hinder the region from utilizing ICT to meet the stated objective of developing “knowledge societies.”



This conference cames on the heels of the May 24-27 thirty sixth meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development on Information and Communications Technologies, which discussed the draft Regional Digital Development Strategy and the Draft Regional Implementation Plan for adoption by CARICOM member states.



Minister Burke challenged the meeting to find ways of utilizing Information and Communication Technology to “build a society, in which all our people can access, create, utilize, share and disseminate information and knowledge.”



He noted that while the region has already conceptualized its own Knowledge Network, there is an urgent need to make it operational, with the implementation of CARIBNET in the CARICOM region and OECS Knowledge Network at the sub-regionally level.

“From all indicators, this region is yet to fully embrace the platform created by the ICT revolution. For us in Grenada, we see no meaningful option or alternative,” the Finance Minister stated, noting that the government views ICT as a “transformational sector.”

He outlined a number of steps government has taken that will help to move the sector forward.



Among those measures are the establishment of an ICT Center of Excellence and Innovation, an agreement with the World Bank for Grenada to serve as the pilot in the Caribbean Regional Communications Infrastructure Programme (CARCIP) under which the country will complete the establishment of its national ICT backbone and Grenada’s own Internet Exchange Point (IXP).



Burke said the government is also pushing ahead with plans, announced in its 2011 budget, for the establishment of a new public-private partnership to provide managed IT services, IT infrastructure management, managed network security services, connectivity solutions, data centre services and the programme management of telephony services.



"We cannot continue to run in analogue mode when the world is digital.



To build an effective knowledge society, we must bridge the digital the divide," Education Minister, Senator Franka Bernadine, said at the opening ceremony of the two-day conference at the Grenadian by Rex Resorts.



The conference focuses on building Caribbean knowledge societies.



One way to achieve this, Sen. Bernadine said, is to reduce the digital divide that limits regional nationals from optimizing their full potential.



It requires allowing them more than having access to technology, and greater effort by educators to alert people to the benefits of technology, the Grenadian Minister said.

"Having technology is just the first step.



When government puts laptops and desktops into the hands of teachers and students, they would have only completed the first part of the process," she said.



Other barriers will also have to be broken if we have to build knowledge societies.



It is hoped that the IFAP conference will help to develop a Caribbean action plan with well articulated policies to close the digital divide; aid the regional movement toward knowledge-based societies; and build awareness and understanding of the role IFAP."

IFAP was developed specifically by the executive of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2009 to provide a framework for international corporation and partnership in building an information society for all.



IFAP was created "as a concrete response to the growing technological challenges and opportunities of the nineties which ushered in the age of an information societyand widened the digital divide," said Bryan Raloykow of UNESCO's Paris-based headquarters.



Conference participants, who are drawn from throughout the Caribbean, were urged to translate their deliberations into concrete measures.



"Unless ICT for development initiatives are people-centered and explicitly founded on human rights, they run the risk of reinforcing and exacerbating existing problems," said Davidson Hepburn, President of the General Conference of UNESCO.



You can download the related documents:-

• List of Actions for Building Caribbean Knowledge Societies



• Final Program IFA - Building Caribbean Knowledge Societies (revised 12 June 2011)

* UNESCO's Information for All Programme (IFAP) is an intergovernmental body created in 2000 to assist Member States in the formulation of national information policy frameworks. Through IFAP governments have pledged to harness the new opportunities of the information age to create equitable societies through better access to information.

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Archive Talk - Birth dates and the British Empire

I always feel a mild sense of archivist euphoria when I encounter a document bearing my birth date: 9 July. Certainly the oldest such document I’ve uncovered while working on the ARCHIVE project lives at the Rosenbach Museum and Library: a 9 July, 1657 letter written to John Thurloe, British secretary of state under Oliver Cromwell, from one of his officials on the island of Jamaica. “Imagine,” I thought, staring at the letter, “this was written 330 years to the date before I was born!”



Then, when I read a bit of the letter and discovered it was a sobering missive relating early British colonizers’ attempts to “subdue” the island’s indigenous population. The letter-writer—apparently a British soldier named William Brayne—requests that Thurloe dispatch to the island “bloodhounds” to assist soldiers in “finding and killing” Jamaica’s “wild negroes.” The letter continues:

“I am Confident [that] if his Highness did but know how useful they [the bloodhounds] might be here he would cause some to be speedily sent” (Volume 3, p. 121).

The topic of the letter, though cold and detached, even clinical in the way in which Brayne discusses the topic made me appreciate how the Caribbean islands have grown and developed through a hard history even more. It’s not every day that you read a coolly written letter requesting the tools by which to police (some would say subjugate) an unstable civilization.



Perhaps I shouldn’t have been too surprised, given the years covered by the John Thurloe papers—1655 to 1660. By this time, the British Empire had established its dominion: in parts of the present-day United States, in many of the smaller Caribbean islands, and in Asia, Africa, and other regions. It had also, by this time, established and consolidated a number of trading companies, like the British East India Company, to administer the colonies and capitalize upon their economic possibilities. Furthermore, the Empire had just signed the Treaty of Westminster, ending the first conflicts in the Anglo-Dutch Wars, and was well-embroiled in the Anglo-Spanish War (1654-1660), which was sparked by commercial rivalry and resulted in the English takeover of Jamaica in 1655.



As an aside, more of a note of fact, the "wild negroes" referred to were a people traveling the smaller islands, stretching from St. Thomas to Tobago, a warlike and indomitable race, collectively known as "Charaibes" or "Caribs," who resisted every attempt at colonization on the part of Europeans, and preferred death to the withering slavery that became the fate of the natives of the larger islands. So stubborn was the resistance offered by these dauntless people that settlements in the places held by them were not effected until long after the other islands begun their flourishing plantation and civilized communities.  The group should not be confused with the race of people, who at this same period, lived Cuba, San Domingo, Jamaica, and the other larger islands in the West Indies, they were a mild and timid race, generally called Arouagues by Labat, Du Tetre and other French historians of the 17th century.



By the time the Protectorate collapsed and Thurloe lost his job in 1660, paving the way for the return of the monarchy and the further expansion of the British Empire, the “wild negroes” of Jamaica had been sold into slavery, exploited by British trade groups as free labor for the burgeoning sugar cane and coffee industries. (Enslaved Africans were also transported to the island.) A century later, the Jamaican slaves—who by then well outnumbered their white masters—mounted Tacky’s Revolt, an attempt to overthrown the colonial government. Untypically of many Caribbean islands, Jamaica have more than two centuries of violence and political upheaval.  However, with the changing politics of the Sugar world Jamaica, as with most Caribbean islands, could finally become independent and they achieved this on 6 August, 1962—a mere twenty-five years before my birth, in 1987.



The Thurloe papers at Rosenbach are chock-a-block full of interesting insights into Protectorate-era England (at least for those who can decipher seventeenth-century script).

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Heritage at Risk – Save Melrose House

Save Melrose House

Melrose House - Source: The Willie Redhead Foundation



In August of 2010, many Grenadians became aware of the potential to lose yet another of Grenada’s significant historic heritage sites. In this case, the threat was not from a natural disaster like hurricane Ivan, but from the wrecking ball. Threatened is Melrose House of Gouyave, in St. Johns Parish.



Melrose House, believed to be built in the early to mid-19^th century, is threatened by its new owners who would like it demolished in order to make way for construction of a new hardware store on the site where it currently stands.



The building, believed to be first owned by the Commissiong family, is one of few of its type remaining in Gouyave today.



Melrose House, is a good example of Caribbean Architecture from the mid-19^th century.



It encompassed the combination of French and English elements that defines architecture that is uniquely Caribbean.



One looking to identify the different architectural styles utilized in the design of Melrose House can find French in the steep pitch roof, English in the double-hung windows, and in it raised basement.



The placement of buildings on piers, which help improve ventilation and protects against floods, and the implementation of deep porches that provide shade and shelter for inhabitants and buildings alike, are ideas European builders learned from the building methods.



This point is important, because to a large degree, many in Caribbean populations reject the historic architecture found throughout the Caribbean, on the grounds that they are a vestige of colonial times and lack connection to them. Grenadians are likely no different.



Not only is a landmark like Melrose House representative of the cultural amalgam that defines Grenadian society, but it is part of the historical continuum that connects Grenada’s past and present.



The cavernous underside of Melrose House, where large rum vats were stored, and the existence of Grenada’s longest-ever-built wooden jetty nearby, suggests a connection to Grenada’s industrial heritage past, in which large shipments of rum were exported to Europe.



Between 1930 and 1940, Melrose House transitioned from private to public ownership , and for a period was the residence of successive Attorneys General of the Windward Islands.



Notable among those that resided at Melrose house was Justice Keith Alleyne, the renowned Queens Council, Attorney General of the Windward Islands, and acting Judge of the Windward and Leeward Islands High Court. Sir Louis Cools-Lartigue, who was Chief Secretary of Windward Islands and serve as interim President of Dominica, also resided at Melrose House.



Because Melrose House served as the residence of the Attorneys General of The Windward Islands, the history of the OECS, which succeeded the West Indies Associated States, is replete with the names of persons who at some point stayed there.  The demolition of Melrose House would represent the ripping out of a page in Grenada’s history book.



Declaring Melrose House a national heritage landmark and developing it as a small museum is one way to preserve and protect it from destruction.  This museum can follow the numerous examples of small museums worldwide, whose mission is the preservation of heritage and cultural properties of significance, in order to exhibit they role in the development of societies. Some notable examples of this regionally and globally are: Arlington House, Speightstown, Barbados; Greenwood Great House, Montego Bay, Jamaica; Goethe House in Frankfurt, Germany, and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Virginia, US.







Creating The Melrose House Museum would have a direct impact on the town of Gouyave. Combined with a well define historic district, Gouyave would benefit in a variety of ways – most notably through economic activity from increased daily tourist visits and raising the profile of the town as a destination in Grenada.



Melrose House can be the foundation for a national museum system, whose mandate would be the management and preservation of significant heritage buildings and sites throughout all of Grenada.



An INTERCOM 2006 Conference Paper, titled Measuring the Impact of Museums on their Communities: The role of the 21st century museum notes that:



… the value of local museums were the links back to community; opportunities for people to visit, including attending events; the work opportunities (both paid & unpaid) that were available; the wealth that the museum creates in the local community leading to generate money to go back to the community. Broader outcomes were also identified, such as developing an appreciation of place and culture, community pride, museums preserving heritage, and opportunities for learning across all age levels.



Structures like Melrose House (and there are many throughout Grenada) provide an invaluable service, bridging the Grenada of now to that of yesteryear. Through they existence, Grenadians and visitors alike are provided tangible connections to the country’s rich history and heritage.



If the living Grenadian history that Melrose House embodies is allowed to die; if the profits of one business man trumps the interest of an entire nation and it generations to follow, then Grenada must answer some fundamental questions about what it is as a society.  Is Grenada a place that can strike a balance between short term economic gain and long term cultural preservation?  Is Grenada a country with leadership that can devise innovative approaches that enables it to leverage its historic character for both cultural and economic purposes?  And lastly, but probably most important: Are Grenadians willing to fight for the history that so much defines them?



What happens to Melrose House will provide an answer that will reverberate for generations to come.



The Grenada Action Forum will like to acknowledge the contributions of Mr. Ray Smith towards this article and is lifelong dedication to the preservation of Grenada’s heritage and historic places and sites.

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