Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Dr. The Most Honourable Jerome Walcott, received a courtesy call from the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Representative and Country Director, Caribbean Multi-Country Office, Regis Chapman.
The meeting served as a formal introduction of Mr. Regis, after the WFP Executive Director’s proposal to appoint him to the post was approved in February 2022.
Minister Walcott welcomed the WFP Representative and Country Director and wished him success in his post. He expressed the hope that there would be even greater levels of cooperation between Barbados and the WFP for the duration of his tenure.
The Foreign Affairs Minister also thanked Mr. Chapman for the assistance provided, along with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, in providing hands-on support to register and repackage COVID-19 medical supplies, which were donated to CARICOM countries for onward shipping.
Senator Walcott also noted the help given by the WFP to the Ministry of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs in training teams to conduct digital assessments, so as to secure temporary housing for people displaced by Hurricane Elsa in July 2021.
Mr. Chapman explained that his Barbados-based Caribbean multi-country office was not only charged with assisting with emergency responses and providing food supplies in the event of a disaster but also strengthening food security analysis, early warning systems and mapping capacities.
According to him, the WFP also wanted to “see how we can build up that next generation of disaster responders who know and understand their role because someone has to get in there quickly, and our work here is really designed around helping to strengthen the Caribbean with mechanisms to do that”.
In 2018, following the impact of the 2017 Atlantic Hurricane season in the region, the WFP established a multi-country office in Barbados to cover 22 countries and territories in the English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean.
Currently, the WFP office in Barbados is in the process of finalising an agreement with Government to establish a Regional Logistics Hub and Centre of Excellence, which will act as a warehousing and surge facility to respond to emergencies within the region, and also provide a space for hands-on training of disaster management professionals.
The World Food Programme is a 100 per cent voluntarily funded organisation, which adopts a systems-focused approach as part of its capacity strengthening programme through research and advocacy, digitisation and digitalisation, human resource development, south-south engagement, and by investing in critical infrastructure and assets.