Regional
Headquarters, Jamaica. Friday, September 13, 2019—Vice-Chancellor
of The University of the West Indies (The UWI), Professor Sir Hilary
Beckles, was visibly moved as he opened his Forum on the Hurricane
Response in The Bahamas on Friday, September 13, 2019. Calling it a
‘zone of vulnerability and devastation’, he addressed the
enormity of devastation, the magnitude of effort required to rebuild,
and The UWI’s role in the context of post-colonial vulnerability.

The Vice-Chancellor
and UWI teams had been and are in the affected islands working on the
ground and with Government officials in the aftermath of Hurricane
Dorian which clocked winds of 220 and battered the islands of Abaco
and Grand Bahama for almost two days. Lecturers and graduate students
of The UWI School of Clinical Medicine and Research have been
providing family medicine to triage, treat, contain, and prevent
diseases. They have also been manning the eight shelters which
average 1500 evacuees each. Vice-Chancellor Beckles noted that the
presence of The UWI on the ground so swiftly is indication of the
institution’s agility and responsiveness.

Mr. Jeremy
Collymore, Resilience Consultant/Advisor attached to the Office of
the Vice-Chancellor, noted that Hurricane Dorian affected the
north-western Bahamas islands for an approximate 68 hours, with the
southern eye-wall planted over Grand Bahama for about 30 hours.
“While,” he said, “the major population and resource centre
were minimally impacted; the impacted areas were major contributors
to the national economy.” He pointed out that detailed
socio-economic impacts were in the embryonic stage of determination.

“During this
recovery period,” Dr. Barbara Carby, Head of The UWI Disaster Risk
Reduction Centre reflected in her presentation, “The UWI is ideally
positioned to advocate for as well as action risk reduction and
resilience building in support of longer term Sustainable Development
goals.”

The UWI Mona Guild
President, Christina Williams was clear in her call to action. “In
2018, on a Friday like this, a young 15-year-old by the name of Greta
Thunberg started a strike in her country. It erupted in thousands of
students across the world striking on a Friday and they termed it
Fridays for Future – A stand against the climate crisis and the
disregard by politicians and world leaders to climate change.” “As
young people,” she said, “we need to also ensure that our
countries are doing as much as they can to always have disaster
reduction policies and also disaster reduction principles in place
before there is actually a crisis to work on.”

The
Vice-Chancellor-led team on mission in The Bahamas met with Prime
Minister Hubert Minnis and his ministerial colleagues as well as the
Recovery Planning Unit in the Prime Minister’s Office. The UWI has
also been liaising with the Regional Response Mechanism, the UNDP,
and other international agencies. The UWI’s response is focused on
multiple areas, including psycho-social support, damage and impact
assessment, hazard resistance and resilience, resettlement and
relocation, coastal engineering, and environmental management.

Vice-Chancellor
Beckles, Mr. Jeremy Collymore, along with Dr. Robin Roberts,
Director, and Faculty Member, Dr. Catherine Conliffe of The UWI
School of Clinical Medicine and Research, Dr. Michelle McLeod, of The
UWI Centre for Hospitality and Tourism Management, and Dr. Cheryl
McDonald-Sloley, Deputy Director Commercial Services Department, The
UWI Open Campus all joined the Vice-Chancellor’s Forum by video
conference from The Bahamas. The Forum was moderated at The UWI’s
Regional Headquarters by Ambassador Dr. Richard Bernal, Pro
Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Practice, Global Affairs. It was
attended by staff, students, including a Bahamian student association
contingent, partners and friends.

About
The Vice-Chancellor’s Forum

As
we mourn the human loss in Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands and
lament their massive property destruction, the extreme vulnerability
of our region is undeniably an existential threat caused by climate
change and global warming. We continue to witness this truth in the
extensive damage and tragic deaths caused by the growing intensity of
hurricanes. The UWI remains committed to championing the proposition
of a resilient Caribbean. This regional University has always borne
the responsibility to serve the people of the Caribbean and, in this
time of despair, is taking the moral and ethical position that we
must provide leadership in responding with alacrity to the crisis and
recovery phases. On Friday,
September 13, 2019,
The UWI convened a Vice-Chancellor’s
Forum on Hurricane Recovery in The Bahamas, at
The UWI Regional Headquarters in Jamaica and broadcast live
on www.uwitv.org 
and UWItv’s
Cable TV channel on the Flow Network. The
Vice-Chancellor’s forums, which first began in 2016, are part of an
ongoing series which seeks to offer informed analysis, perspective
and context to important developments in our region.

The
full audio
recording
of the Forum is available at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/54qpgptfpunvpj3/The%20Vice-Chancellor’s%20Forum%20on%20Hurricane%20Recovery%20in%20The%20Bahamas%2010000000_122702482438843_7354176179229348583_n.mp3?dl=0

The
clip of the Vice-Chancellor’s
remarks is
accessible at
https://www.dropbox.com/s/49cnzkwzlgcxbyj/The%20Vice-Chancellor’s%20Forum%20on%20Hurricane%20Recovery%20in%20The%20Bahamas%20VC%20Message.mp4?dl=0

About
The UWI

For
more than 70 years The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has
provided service and leadership to the Caribbean region and wider
world. The UWI evolved from a university college of London in Jamaica
with 33 medical students in 1948 to an internationally respected,
regional university with near 50,000 students across five campuses:
Cave
Hill
in
Barbados; Mona
in Jamaica, Five
Islands
in
Antigua and Barbuda, St.
Augustine
in
Trinidad and Tobago; and an Open
Campus with over 42 locations serving 17 Caribbean territories.

The
world’s most reputable ranking agency, Times
Higher Education,
has ranked The UWI among the top 600 universities in the world for
2019, and the 40 best universities in Latin America and the Caribbean
for 2018 and 2019. The UWI is the only Caribbean-based University to
make these prestigious lists and is one of only two regional
universities in the world (the other being the University of South
Pacific).

As
part of its robust globalization agenda, The UWI has established
partnering centres with universities in North
America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa
including the State
University of New York (SUNY)-UWI Center for Leadership and
Sustainable Development;
the Canada-Caribbean Studies Institute with Brock University; the
Strategic Alliance for Hemispheric Development with Universidad de
los Andes (UNIANDES); The UWI-China Institute of Information
Technology, the University of Lagos (UNILAG)-UWI Institute of African
and Diaspora Studies and the
Institute for Global African Affairs with the University of
Johannesburg (UJ).

The
regional university offers more
than 800 certificate, diploma, undergraduate, and postgraduate degree
options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities &
Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Social
Sciences and Sport. As
the region’s premier research academy, The UWI’s foremost
objective is driving sustainable economic growth and development.
Visit www.uwi.edu.

(Please
note that the proper name of the university is The University of the
West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)