Guyana to host Training Centre for Region’s youth with disabilities

A Regional Training Centre for young people with disabilities will be built in Guyana and utilise Cuba’s extensive experience in the field to assist CARICOM Member States to meet their special education needs associated with disabilities.

The Tripartite Cooperation and Technical Assistance Agreement to bring the centre to fruition was on Thursday signed by CARICOM Secretary-General Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, Guyana’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge, and Cuba’s Ambassador to Guyana H.E. Julio Cesar Gonsalez Marchante at the CARICOM Secretariat, Georgetown, Guyana.

The establishment of a “Regional Training Centre for Development and Stimulation of Children, Adolescents and Young People with Special Educational Needs Associated with Disabilities” came out of a proposal at the fifth CARICOM-Cuba Summit, two years ago, that Cuba would cooperate with CARICOM to create a Training Centre for the Treatment of Physical Disabilities to assist physically challenged children and youths.  That CARICOM-Cuba summit came a year after a high-level Ministerial meeting in Haiti in 2013 where the Petionville Declaration recommended specific national and regional actions to address the needs of People with Disabilities.

The CARICOM Secretary-General in his remarks at the signing ceremony said the project emphasises the interest of all parties to address a very important social and humanitarian challenge facing the Region.  It also aims to use Cuba’s extensive experience in this area to assist CARICOM Member States in improving the lives of a vulnerable sector of our population, he said.