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Caribbean Tourism Industry Stakeholders to Participate in OAS Corporate Social Responsibility Workshop

  September 3, 2010

Tourism industry stakeholders from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago will participate in a two-day workshop organized by the Organization of American States (OAS). Titled, “Corporate Social Responsibility in the Caribbean Tourism Industry: Opportunities for Small and Medium Tourism Enterprises,” the workshop will take place Wednesday, September, 8, 2010, at the Grenada Grand Beach resort.

This workshop forms part of a wider initiative developed by the OAS Executive Secretariat for Integral Development (SEDI) with the support of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and in partnership with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the Young Americas Business Trust (YABT). It is aimed at promoting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) among Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The objectives of the training are to create awareness of CSR and its relevance to the Caribbean tourism industry; to build the capacity of the public and private sectors in the tourism industry to support and promote CSR; to build the capacity of tourism practitioners in the Caribbean to engage in CSR activities and integrate these into their operations; and to provide tools and resources to enable the implementation of CSR initiatives.

As part of the CSR program, a regional initiative was developed to deliver CSR training to public- and private-sector tourism representatives in the 14 OAS Member States participating in the Small Tourism Enterprise Program (STEP) managed by the OAS Department of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism. Three workshops were planned as part of this initiative: the first was successfully executed in Saint Lucia in mid-September 2009, the second was held in The Bahamas in November 2009, and the one in Grenada will be the final installment of this initiative.

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


Reference: E-314/10