OVER THE COURSE of four days, hundreds of Barbadians assembled in Atlanta came to some inescapable conclusions.
By the time they began last Monday to head to their respective homes in North America, Britain, Spain, Canada and the Caribbean, after attending a Barbados centred conference in America’s best known southern city, the Bajans had concluded that the billions of dollars invested in human development during the past 50 years of Barbados’ sovereignty, had reaped handsome dividends.
The upshot: it was well-placed to accelerate the pace of economic and social expansion during the next half-century.
To achieve that strategic objective Barbados must accentuate science and technology; the educational system should be refocused; entrepreneurship emphasised; bold leadership be a fact of life; and must build on its solid foundation of a stable democracy, adherence to the rule of law and good governance while maximising the use of the “excellent” telecommunications infrastructure and employing its “ well-educated workforce.”
Those recommendations were among a list of ideas articulated at what was generally considered an informative conference planned by a group of Bajans in Miami and Atlanta led by Colin Mayers, Barbados’ Consul General in the Southern states, Dr Edward Layne, a physician and Barbados’ honorary consul in Atlanta for at least 20 years, and David Cutting, an international banking professional who held several major executive positions in Standard Chartered Bank in New York, Botswana, Nigeria, Hong Kong and Singapore but who is now a Barbados’ honorary consul.
“The conference was an unqualified success and I was glad that I had the opportunity to participate in its deliberations,” said Dr Cardinal Warde, an engineering professor at the world famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who heads the Caribbean Science Foundation in Barbados.
Ed Bushell, President of the Barbados Association of Retired Persons, (BARP), agreed.
“It was the best of the Barbadian conferences I have attended in the US in recent years,” said the former consul general in Miami. “The recommendations on business and entrepreneurship should be outlined in Barbados.”
The conference’s theme was Barbados Comes to Atlanta, Imagine the Possibilities in business, tourism, education and culture. It was attended by a wide range of university academicians, corporate executives, experts, senior government officials and others from Barbados, UK Georgia, Alabama, Texas and California. Among them were Senator Maxine McClean, Foreign Affairs Minister; Richard Sealy, Minister of Tourism, Dame Billie Miller, Evelyn Greaves, a former Cabinet minister who later became Barbados’ top diplomat in Canada, Dr Louis Brown, a retired Texas Southern University professor in Houston where he is also Barbados’ honorary consul, Professor Edward Davis, Dean of the School of Business of Clarke Atlanta University, Rhoda Green, honorary consul in South Carolina, and Professor Eric Jack, Dean of the School of Business of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“Quite a lot of effort, thought and imagination went into the planning and holding of the conference which ended last week,” said Mayers.
Layne said a key observation was the “enabling environment” Barbados possessed that “would take us forward in the years ahead. It can enable us to follow the model set by Singapore.”
Cutting said: “The conference has given us a road map” for development.
“This event allows us to share all that is Barbados with the people and business community of Atlanta, and indeed our diaspora community of Barbadians in Atlanta and across the USA,” said McClean.
Please read the full story in today’s Sunday Sun, or in the eNATION edition.
