OECS Director General Calls for Rebuilding Human Civilization with Education at OPEC Fund Development Forum

OECS Media Release

Advocating for reform in how development experts approach sustainability, the Director General of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), Dr. Didacus Jules, participated as a panelist in this year’s OPEC Fund Development Forum on June 25, 2024, in Vienna, Austria. 

Following a day of solution-oriented discussions and networking sessions with a focus on people, Dr. Jules commended the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Fund for International Development’s (OPEC Fund's) tangible commitments to create a more equitable world.

Dr. Jules presented on the forum’s closing panel titled “Walking the Last Mile for Small Island Developing States (SIDS)” where he compared SIDS to

“an ideal petri dish on a small scale to show innovation in a holistic, integrated way that can actually be scaled up in larger demographics”. 

His fellow panelists were Al Shaimaa Al-Sheiby - Vice President, Strategy, OPEC Fund; Chad Blackman - Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Investment, Barbados; ​ and Mere Falemaka - Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva, Pacific Islands Forum.

“We’re still caught in that paradigm of seeing education as serving the needs of the economy…It’s not just about the skills fit for the economy and the new direction but also we need to look at education from three perspectives,” Dr. Jules said. 

He expanded on the three perspectives of purpose for rebuilding human civilization, pedagogy, and assessment.

Dr. Jules said, “We need to learn to learn but also to learn to do.”

Vice President Al Shaimaa Al-Sheiby announced the OPEC Fund Island Resilience Facility which is an initiative among the OPEC Fund Development Partnes of about $500 million for a needs-based financing approach to benefit SIDS.

Watch the full panel discussion:



Claudia Mc Dowell

Communications Specialist, Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States

OECS Communications Unit

Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States

 

 

 

Get updates in your mailbox

By clicking "Subscribe" I confirm I have read and agree to the Privacy Policy.

About The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States

Back to www.oecs.int

The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) is an International Organisation dedicated to economic harmonisation and integration, protection of human and legal rights, and the encouragement of good governance among independent and non-independent countries in the Eastern Caribbean. The OECS came into being on June 18th 1981, when seven Eastern Caribbean countries signed a treaty agreeing to cooperate with each other while promoting unity and solidarity among its Members. The Treaty became known as the Treaty of Basseterre, so named in honour of the capital city of St. Kitts and Nevis where it was signed. The OECS today, currently has eleven members, spread across the Eastern Caribbean comprising Antigua and Barbuda, Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and The Grenadines, British Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Martinique and Guadeloupe. 

Contact

Morne Fortune Castries Saint Lucia

+1758-455-6377

media@oecs.int

www.oecs.int