News Releases

A student group from The University of the West Indies (UWI) is putting green living squarely on the agenda, with the commissioning of a new alternative-concept Food Park.

Titled “Seeds of a Caring Society”, the Food Park launching will take place on Friday 14th August at the Trinity Hall, The University of The West Indies (UWI) St Augustine, at 3 p.m. The event, which is free and open to the public, is co-hosted by the students of the Social Policy and Administration III class, along UWI Planters for Social Change, a student-activist group based at the St Augustine Campus. The ceremony will introduce the Trinity Hall Food Park as a model for sustainable community food production in Trinidad and Tobago, with the aim of sensitising policy-makers and the wider community to the development advantages of community food parks. The Food Park also serves as a template for the development of food parks at the San Juan Girls’ Government Primary School, the Cyril Ross Children’s Home and the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP) site in Mt. Hope.

Sir Ellis, former President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is expected to deliver a Special Address at the ceremony. Patricia Jagassar Clement, President of UWI Planters for Social Change, credited Sir Ellis with inspiring the creation of the Food Park. She said that the Food Park was inspired by Sir Ellis’ symbollic planting of a breadfruit tree at a recent “Planting for Food Security” symposium, co-hosted by the UWI Faculties of Social Sciences and Science and Agriculture.

“Seeds of a Caring Society” began with a mission to inspire the university community to venture out and grow their own food. Since then, the Planters for Social Change have started the ‘My Green Thumb’ project to take the idea beyond the walls of the University, by training participants to create and maintain community gardens through the Master Home Garden Training Course.

For more information, please visit http://foodprod.sta.uwi.edu/greenthumb, or contact Patricia Jagassar Clement at plantersplanting@gmail.com, or (868) 476-9181.EndFor more UWI News, click http://sta.uwi.edu/news.

ABOUT UWI

Over the last six decades, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged University with over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest and most longstanding higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, with main campuses in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and Centres in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Christopher (St Kitts) & Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent & the Grenadines. UWI recently launched its Open Campus, a virtual campus with over 50 physical site locations across the region, serving over 20 countries in the English-speaking Caribbean. UWI is an international university with faculty and students from over 40 countries and collaborative links with over 60 universities around the world. Through its seven Faculties, UWI offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Pure & Applied Sciences, Science and Agriculture, and Social Sciences.