News Releases

UWI hosts Conference on Poverty

For Release Upon Receipt - October 17, 2011

St. Augustine


The Sociology Unit of the Department of Behavioural Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of the West Indies, will host an International Conference on Poverty Alleviation, on Thursday 20th and Friday 21st October 2011, at the Learning Resource Centre (LRC) Auditorium, UWI.

Themed “Encouraging Productivity and Poverty Alleviation through the financing of Micro-entrepreneurs”, the conference seeks to provide a space for discussion, dialogue and recommendations on issues of poverty, from perspectives that include its alleviation and eradication. Conference topics will include Poverty and the Economy; Micro-finance and Micro-entrepreneurs; Social Structure and Poverty; Absolute and Relative Poverty in a status-driven environment; Producing to get out of poverty; and Health care and Poverty, to name a few.

Experts on poverty from various fields, including academia, banking, social development, government, NGOs, media and business, have been invited to speak at the poverty conference. By drawing speakers from these public and private sectors, both locally and regionally, conference organizers believe the Conference on Poverty will create a timely and needed intervention in a period of increased economic inequalities.

Professor Brett Williams of American University, Washington DC, will deliver the keynote address at the conference.  Professor Williams began her work as an anthropologist working among migrant farm workers in Illinois, exploring how they coped with terrible poverty. She has written about gentrification, displacement and homelessness; urban renewal and public housing; race and poverty; environmental justice in the Anacostia Watershed; urban nature; illness and inequality; the culture of and credit and debt. She has published six books, including Debt for Sale, which explores the rise of the super-profitable credit industry, including credit cards, student loans, pawnshops, and other predatory lenders.

For further information on the Conference on Poverty, please contact Dr. Ronald Marshall or Ms. Fareena Alladin at (868) 662-2002 ext. 83506 or at ronald.marshall@sta.uwi.edu or fareena.alladin@sta.uwi.edu.

For the latest 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.

(Please note that the registered name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

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