The growing levels of technical UNESCO expertise being deployed by UNESCO in the Federation in education, cultural heritage and biodiversity policy development were enumerated recently in a detailed briefing by the country’s envoy to UNESCO in the presence of the Honourable Deputy Prime Minister and Minister responsible for UNESCO affairs, Dr. Geoffrey Hanley.
Some eight UNESCO projects are being implemented concurrently across the Federation, supported by professional guidance and funding in areas ranging from scaling-up the professionalisation of the national teaching force to strengthening the biodiversity credentials at the St. Mary’s Biosphere Reserve, and from restructuring of the National Accreditation System for higher qualifications to safeguarding measures to protect St. Kitts and Nevis National Intangible Culture.
In a virtual briefing on 30th January last with Minister Hanley, the Federation’s Ambassador to UNESCO in Paris, Dr. David Doyle and H.E. Nerys Dockery, the Secretary-General of the St. Kitts and Nevis National Commission for UNESCO in Basseterre, spoke of the compelling prospects of continuing technical expertise and financial support going into 2025 by this UN specialised agency.
One of the highlights evoked was a three-year biodiversity-strengthening project, now coming to fruition at the St. Mary’s Biosphere Reserve (SMBR) and initiated under the UNESCO Earth Network Programme funded by the Italian government. The intervention seeks to convert the SMBR into a more sustainable, biodiversity-friendly tropical environment to the benefit of farmers, small business owners and local citizens. Four distinct but interrelated proposals are being finalized by UNESCO experts, accompanied by funding proposals, towards the construction of greenhouses for cultivation of seed banks, the development of new seed varieties, installing an innovative fog-collection system for sustainable agricultural water provision, and establishment of a Neem processing plant for organic pest management system.
With the support of the Government of Japan’s fund-in-trust, the Federation is poised to integrate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into the national education curriculum. Future focus will look at developing a teachers ESD training manual, an ESD training plan for teachers and guidance on inputting ESD into the national curriculum.
UNESCO continues to work with the National Commission and the Ministry of Culture in supporting efforts to identify and preserve St. Kitts and Nevis’s Intangible and tangible cultural heritage. Following a four-year UNESCO US$ 180,000 strong-funded activity, the Federation will soon issue a National Intangible Cultural Heritage Policy framework for review by government cabinet members. The aim is to identify and safeguard intangible cultural heritage items like songs, music, dance, drama, skills, cuisine, crafts, etc. Many of these items will find their way on the UNESCO List of Intangible Culture Heritage as the next critical stage of the activity this year.
Work is also underway to put forward four identified eligible historical places and sites of memory in the Federation for inscription on the SKN Tentative List as a basis for selecting one site for eventual inscription on the prestigious UNESCO World Heritage List.
A milestone in teachers’ training will be realised this year as a result of the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) by St. Kitts and Nevis and the Open University of Tanzania (OUT), which will offer teachers remote access to its remote Bachelor’s degree in education. The Federation continues to build financial support for this initiative in what Dr. Geoffrey Hanley, Minister of Education, described as a ‘game-changing contribution to the professionalization of the nations’ teaching staff.”
“I cannot emphasise enough the importance of this scholarship-type opportunity for our teaching profession at a time when enhancing appropriate skills is central to the government’s quest to transform the twin-island state into a sustainable island, based on quality education delivery and qualified teachers”.
The Ministry of Education envisages the registration of an initial cohort of 20 teachers to the OUT Bachelor’s Degree programme covering the above disciplines, such as education and training provision, management, research, monitoring and evaluation. And will also include special needs teaching techniques.
This year, we will see a UNESCO biodiversity expert team coming to St. Kitts and Nevis to launch a major public stakeholder consultation on the elimination of single-use plastics within the St. Mary’s Biosphere Reserve, which stretches from ridge to reef from Canada to Ottley’s Village. The project is inspired by a similar project implemented in St. Tomé and Principe off the west coast of Africa, where local authorities tackled the plastic proliferation challenge by involving the whole population in collecting plastic bottles while also improving the recycling of organic trash and supporting a sustainable economy in the biosphere reserve.