Media Center

Press Release

OAS Social Protection Program Makes Strides in the Caribbean

The Organization of American States (OAS), through its Department of Social Development and Employment, is making strides in its “Puente in the Caribbean Program” and recently conducted a mission to the Caribbean to provide technical support to program implementers. The “Puente in the Caribbean Program,” which is based on the highly successful Chile Puente Program, seeks to improve the quality of life of people living in extreme poverty and has attracted the attention of several Caribbean governments.

The governments of St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados and Suriname are participating in the second phase of the Program, which began in 2007 and seeks to strengthen social protection strategies in the English-speaking Caribbean through technical cooperation and capacity building. The OAS mission that recently traveled to the Caribbean met with the Minister of National Mobilization and Social Development of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Michael Browne; the Minister of Social Care, Constituency Empowerment, and Urban and Rural Development of Barbados, Christopher Sinckler; and the Minister of Social Affairs and Public Housing of Suriname, Hendrik Soerat Setrowidjojo.

“This will be a flagship program for us within the next two years,” Minister Sinckler said during the meeting.

Francisco Pilotti, Director of the Department of Social Development and Employment, said that “an important result of the mission was the sensitization of Caribbean partners on the use and functioning of the recently launched Puente Virtual Forum which is a virtual classroom, designed and managed in collaboration with the Education Portal of the Americas, to facilitate ongoing capacity building in social protection strategies.”

The mission was conducted by Julie Nurse, Social Development Specialist in the OAS Department of Social Development and Employment. “The purpose of the visit was to encourage support for the initiatives among senior management and to provide technical support to the program implementers,” she explained”

The governments of Jamaica, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago adopted the Program in its first phase and have learned the precise mechanisms and principles of the program in an effort to adapt them to their unique social protection needs. The Program is financed by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the Government of Chile with the technical support and coordination of the OAS Department of Social Development and Employment.

Photographs of the event are available here.


For more information, please visit the OAS Website at www.oas.org.

Reference: E-104/10