The Hon. Hamilton Lashley (at right), in conversation with Dr. Doug Carter (far left), and Pastor Andre Thomas (centre).

Advisor to the Prime Minister on Poverty Eradication and the Millennium Development Goals, Hamilton Lashley wants to see global leaders spending less on war and channeling such funds into eradicating poverty.

His comments came today as he addressed a leadership conference hosted by his office in collaboration with the University of Innovation and Leadership at the Grande Salle, Central Bank.

“Some Governments spend millions and billions of dollars every year creating war. Arming soldiers, developing nuclear arms, and then spend almost the same amount on disarmament, which in my opinion does not make any sense. Take all of those billions, and put them into social programmes and the eradication of poverty would be possible,”  said Mr. Lashley.

He stressed the importance of effective leadership at the community and government levels stating that Barbados was at a transitional point in this whole new global framework that had developed.

“We now have to train and retrain our leaders, particularly at the community level. There may be a need to return to local governance which would essentially be a system of empowerment of community leaders right across the board. Such empowerment will come with a level of trust,” he said.

Minister Lashley noted that community leadership should not be taken for granted nor should it be tied to any single political organization because such would be “a recipe for failure and its life expectancy would be very short”.

Featured speaker, Senior Vice President of EQUIP, Dr. Doug Carter noted that leadership was a journey and not a destination. “Leadership is not acquired in a day but it is something that is acquired daily. The most important thing you will ever learn is what you learn after you know it all. When you reach that point where you think you have learnt it all, that is the point that you must now begin to learn.”

He added that leadership was about serving and not being served; “leadership is others focused, it is about adding value to the life of others. One of the interesting things is, the higher you move in leadership the more you are involved in serving,” Dr. Carter said.

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