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| Students on tour of the Parliamentary Museum on Monday. (C. Pitt/BGIS) |
Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison being inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site was another stage in an ongoing quest to see the area reach its true potential.
This was pointed out by Minister of Tourism, Richard Sealy, as he addressed students at the Tourists for the Day event yesterday, which was part of the activities for Tourism Week 2011.
"A lot of hard work for a number of years by so many individuals went towards that effort…You [young people] will see the benefits because, as long as it took us to get that inscription, it’s probably going to take us an equally protracted period to realise all the potential from it," Mr. Sealy said.
While the sites are already celebrated in their own right, the Tourism Minister encouraged the students to embrace their lesser known, historic value.
"It’s a project, and we’ve reached a milestone; but we have to properly leverage it so we can get the maximum benefit from it…There is a very capable committee that is working on trying to realise a number of goals but it is really for the young people of Barbados to start to embrace it now.
"When you hear the word Bridgetown, you think about shopping, usually on a Saturday morning; and when you hear the word Garrison, you think about horse racing on a Saturday afternoon. But you’re going to see those two entities in a different light today," he remarked.
Yesterday, students took part in a jitney bus tour of the Garrison Historic Area, and also visited the Parliamentary Museum and Nidhe Israel Museum in Bridgetown.