–for young people with disabilities

MINISTER within the Ministry of Education, Ms Nicolette Henry has been brought up-to-speed on the cooperation and technical assistance Agreement between CARICOM, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Cuba and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the establishment of the Regional Training Centre.This project is aimed at stimulating the development of children, adolescents and young people with special educational needs associated with disabilities.

The appraisal was done on Monday during a courtesy call paid to the minister by Cuban Ambassador to Guyana, Mr Julio César González Marchante and Professor Jorge Duvalon Ramirez.

The Agreement for this initiative was signed in December 2016 by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Carl Greenidge, Ambassador Gonzalez Marchante and CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador Irwin LaRocque.
The proposal to finance this project was made by the Government of Cuba at the Fifth Cuba-CARICOM Summit in 2014.

Some of the specific objectives of the project are to:-
1. Improve the evaluation, diagnosis, and counseling of people with disabilities in any context in which they are, from the earliest ages.

2. Promote educational training strategies to improve the prevention, correction, compensation, and rehabilitation and socio-professional integration services offered by professionals, based on social cooperation.

3. Promote cooperation among various social welfare institutions and educational leaders in the transfer of strategies, methods, and techniques in the transformation of comprehensive attention provided to persons with disabilities.

4. Improve professionals, technicians and other educational agents training and preparation involved in the educational attention of persons with disabilities in the region.

5. Develop programmes for Education and guidance of family and community members who interact with persons with disabilities.

6. Stimulate the realisation of research to improve the quality of educational attention of persons with disabilities.

7. Promote scientific production that contributes to socialise the best experiences of managers, teachers, and specialists from CARICOM countries.

The implementation of the project has five stages, among them Awareness and Diagnostic Comprehension; Design of the Training Centre and Counseling to People who will work on it; Implementation of the Planned Development Centre; Performance of Regional Training Center for Educational Attention of Persons with Disabilities and Monitoring and Evaluation.

The expected results are to improve teachers training for providing education to persons with disabilities; improve diagnosis quality and effectiveness and stimulate the development of children, adolescents, youth and adults with disabilities; improve the life quality of persons with disabilities in any context in which they are, and model validation of regional training centre to provide comprehensive educational attention to children, adolescents and youth with disabilities.