The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) has taken on several initiatives throughout the island to support the nation’s youth.
These initiatives, the ECCB’s Governor Timothy N. J. Antoine, said, will foster development and will place students on a brighter path as they pursue their careers.
Among its many initiatives is “Bright Sparks”, which is a programme we do with Sir Arthur Lewis Community College or State Colleges where (we take) students who are interested in a career in IT or in STEM for a six-month internship (and) often extend that for a further six months. In some cases we’ve hired permanently,” Governor Antoine said at a press conference last week.
“So far (we have) had 16 persons across the Currency Union benefit from this programme and when we had our discussion with the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College we did indicate to them that we are looking forward to them sending the next (set of students). Hopefully we’ll have two new students coming from Sir Arthur soon under this programme,” he said.
The ECCB also launched its Generative AI & Python Camps in collaboration with Taiwan this summer.
According to the Governor, “These are aimed at engaging our secondary students in understanding and developing their STEM skills. I’m pleased to note that we have committed as Central Bank to train at least 500 of our students every year for the next five years in this area starting this year. If you saw the chatbots (that were) developed by those students you’d be very impressed with the initial work. We’re very pleased about the fact that in these camps they were improving their communication skills, creativity, collaboration (and) conflict resolution, all of which are important for youth and their development so we’re very pleased with this partnership.”
He also highlighted the ECCB’s Children’s Connection Radio Programme which airs once a month on ten radio stations throughout the ECCB’s member countries and targets children between the ages of 5-12.
In Saint Lucia the ECCB has the programme on the “last Saturday in the month on ‘The Wave’ at 11:00 a.m. with Stanislaus Bishop and Deja Anthony, and again it’s another opportunity for us to engage our youth to get them to begin to understand financial literacy and to empower them,” the Governor explained.
According to the ECCB, the Children’s Connection Programme is captured under the Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance pillar of the Bank’s Strategic Plan.
This pillar represents the Bank’s effort to be a model, advocate and influencer for environmentally and socially responsive action for sustainable development in the ECCU, the Bank said.
“Similarly, with ‘Youth Express’ where we give young people a voice, we’ve done other things like music competitions, essay competitions (and) poetry competitions, again looking for opportunities for young people. Later this month we are going to have the ECCB International Netball Series hosted here in Saint Lucia,” Governor Antoine said.
The Netball Series was launched in June 2019 with the ECCB as its title sponsor and forms part of the Bank’s Community Outreach thrust. The competition replaces the OECS’ Under-23 Netball Tournament which the ECCB sponsored from 1991 to 2018.
The decision to upgrade to an international series hinged on the Bank’s desire to provide an opportunity for netballers to play international matches annually, thereby improving their ranking on the world stage, the ECCB said.
The ECCB continues to work with youth throughout the region with the hopes of fostering development. And, as the Governor indicated, the Bank’s investments are certainly paying off.