‘Regional and Revealing, Upbeat and Uplifting!’
CASTRIES Saint Lucia, Thursday September 24, 2020:– The Saint Lucia National Reparations Committee (NRC) is promising an inaugural lecture in its schools that will be regional in content and purely Caribbean in character, with Saint Lucian and Caribbean students – and teachers – to get a first indication of how the regional schools’ series will feed from Saint Lucia to the rest of the region.
Primarily aimed at local and regional schools, this evening’s online lecture will be delivered by Professor Verene Shepherd, Director of The UWI’s Center for Reparations Research (CRR), who will speak on the topic ‘Reparation, Psychological Rehabilitation and Pedagogical Strategies’.
Professor Verene Shepherd’s is Director of The UWI’s Center for Reparation Research (CRR), with which the NRC is jointly organizing the ongoing regional Schools Reparations Lecture series, which is preceded by others in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, Saint Lucia and Trinidad & Tobago.
NRC Chairman Earl Bousquet says tonight’s lecture “will be regional and revealing, upbeat and uplifting.”
He added, “Tonight’s lecture will offer Caribbean lessons based on Caribbean history and facts, using examples well-known to the region — and Professor Shepherd will infuse a deep dose of Caribbean music to help get across her message of psychological rehabilitation and pedagogical strategies for reparations.”
The NRC Chairman said it “will be presented by a sterling contributor to the process of research and documentation of the history of all eight cycles of the Reparations struggle, from Slavery to 2020.”
He said her presentation this evening “also comes on the eve of the third anniversary of the CRR, which was established on October 12, 2017.”
Bousquet said he attended the CRR’s launch three years ago in Jamaica “and was glad to have been in the illustrious company of the original and immortal Mystic Revelation of Rastafari band and the inimitable dub poet Mutabaruka, at the opening of an event that also brought together the son of Marcus Garvey and the daughter of Kwame Nkrumah, in the Caribbean, for the launch of a tri-continental approach to Reparations between promoters and activists in the Caribbean, Africa and The Americas.”
He continued, saying: “Much of what she will be speaking about this evening will inspire viewers by virtue of the diversity of her presentation and the depth of discourse it will encourage beyond this evening.”
The online lecture, which will also be followed by regional audiences through Facebook and YouTube, will also include Power Point presentations and a ‘Question and Answer’ period.
The NRC Chair also explained that “while tonight’s will be the second in the national series of Reparations Lectures, it will also be the inaugural one in the Schools Series and will be aimed at students and teachers, as well as parents and the general public’ to sensitize the nation and the region to what is planned for future school lectures.
Tonight’s lecture begins at 7.00pm (EC) and 6.00pm (Jamaica) and can be followed online at: www.open.uwi.edu/livstream and www.facebook.com/uwiopencampuscaribbean
ABOUT PROFESSOR VERENE SHEPHERD
Professor Verene A. Shepherd is a Social Historian, Director of the Centre for Reparation Research (CRR) and a Vice Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination on Racial Discrimination (CERD). She’s also the immediate past University Director of the Institute for Gender & Development Studies at The University of the West Indies. She spent five years as a member of the UN’s Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, serving two as Chair. Professor Shepherd also hosts the popular ‘Talking History’ on Nationwide 90 FM on Saturdays. A published author, she has written several books, including: ‘I want to Disturb my Neighbour: Lectures on Slavery, Emancipation & Postcolonial Jamaica (2007)’; ‘Livestock,
