A meeting entitled “The state of and outlook for agricultural information services in the Caribbean: building leadership and commitment for joint activities” took place 13-14 November, in Trinidad and Tobago. It brought together 20 information specialists from the region.

Organized by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), the objective of the activity was to improve the integration of Caribbean information services with each other and with their international counterparts.

Since October 2007, the two agencies have been promoting a distance education process for 30 professionals from the information services of 12 Caribbean countries. The participants are increasing their knowledge of the design of information strategies for agriculture, the construction and management of digital libraries and the use of existing information resources for this sector.

The objective of the training process is to equip a group of professionals in methodologies to spearhead information strategies and organize larger collections of information at the local and regional levels.

To put the finishing touches to the process, the recent onsite meeting involved an in-depth discussion of the information strategies that the people who took part in the distance education process and other guests from the Caribbean are implementing in their respective countries, IICA’s Head of Documentation and Publications, Federico Sancho, reports.

The activity also strengthened the integration of, and collaboration among, countries and institutions in regard to information management topics. The cooperation agencies were able to ascertain from stakeholders themselves the cooperation needed in the field of information management for the development of the countries involved (Bahamas, Jamaica, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago).

In addition to Sancho and the officials from the countries, the IICA Representative in Trinidad and Tobago, Gregg Rawlings, the IICA Information Specialist in Trinidad, Kathryn Duncan, and the head of the CTA’s training programs, Roger Obubo, took part in the meeting.