PROVIDING its members with critical business development and education support remain key aspects of the Saint Lucia Chamber of Commerce value proposition. Thus the Chamber is seeking through this e-symposium to help members understand risk reduction and adopt resilience practices at this critical juncture. This responds to the needs of businesses across the spectrum of sectors and sizes.
The Chamber of Commerce is determined to ensure that businesses, especially MSMEs, are able to think and act assertively towards ensuring resilience and business continuity, in the face of the high vulnerability of the St. Lucia landscape where new and emerging interactions between climate-driven, environmental, socio-economic and biological risk, assume increasing significance. The one day seminar will inform businesses on concepts of risk reduction and resilience and the components and nature of risk; demonstrate the value of adopting resilient practices for businesses; encourage the exchange of experience, good resilience practices and challenges unique to the MSME sector; and, introduce participants to UNDRR’s set of toolkits for risk reduction and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The e-symposium is organized by the Chamber in keeping with its commitment to educate its members and the wider business community on disaster risk reduction, through annual symposia and training programs. This is the third year of such programs. For two consecutive years 2018 and 2019, half day insurance seminars were held and between 2019 and 2020 in conjunction three Business Continuity Planning Training Sessions have been hosted. This e-symposium continues the Chamber’s efforts at strengthening the capacity of members to withstand externally generated shocks.
In this endeavor of building more resilient businesses through engagement in disaster risk reduction and resilience, the Chamber has partnered with the ARISE Network and the United Nations Department for Disaster Risk Reduction to present this important and valuable e-symposium “Enhancing the Resilience of Caribbean Micro, Small & Medium Sized Enterprises to Multi-hazards” on November 11th 2020 from 9:00am to 4:30pm via zoom. This e-symposium is free of charge in large measure due to the support of UNDRRR and the kind contributions of Savings Banks Foundation for International Cooperation (SBFIC), 1st National Bank, Bank of St. Lucia, St. Lucia Development Bank and collaboration with the Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies and the Caribbean Network of Chambers of Commerce.
The e-symposium will be delivered by Dr. Alexander Mirescu, who has had over a decade of experience in disaster risk reduction and urban resilience. His full biography can be found here. The Chamber encourages persons to register early as space is limited.