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Basseterre, St. Kitts, June 09, 2021 (SKNIS): The Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP) is a key player in the Capacity Building Project for Youth organizations in St. Kitts and Nevis and has provided financial and technical support to projects that conserve and restore the environment while enhancing people’s well-being and livelihoods.

The Capacity Building Project was launched in April 2021 by St. Kitts and Nevis Youth Ambassador Corps to increase the contributions of young people to the sustainable development of the twin-island Federation. The Small Grants Project is funding the initiative to the tune of US$49,970.00. SGP has a long and productive partnership with the Department of Youth Empowerment in St. Kitts that has resulted in several environmental-centric projects such as seabed and beach clean-ups, an art exhibition, and coral reef tours and education sessions.

“We have resources from the Small Grants Programme committed to supporting this. It is out of a discussion with them that we all agreed that there is a significant gap in the capacity of our local organizations in developing, implementing successful projects in the community and across the country,” said Pierre Liburd, Director in the Department of Youth Empowerment, on the June 09 edition of Working for You. “It is a partnership to help to address and fill in these gaps and position our youth organizations to strengthen themselves, identify issues in the communities that they could address, and be able to mobilize resources towards addressing these challenges.”

Mr. Liburd said that upon completion organizations will be able to get resources from the wider Caribbean and globally.

“Successful organizations after this initiative, once they apply themselves they would be able to access resources that are available only to non-governmental organizations both nationally, regionally and internationally,” he said. “This is where we are teaching somebody how to fish so that they could collect their own fishing implement programme and not have to rely on donations.”

The initiative, dubbed the Youth Capacity Building Small Grants Project on Youth in Sustainable Development, will build the capacity and practical skills of young people to design, implement, and monitor interventions relevant to the social, economic, and sustainable development of youth and their communities.