Declaring it stands in full solidarity with the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the University of the West Indies said Wednesday it is ready to mobilize the full strength of its engineering, research, and humanitarian connections in response to La Soufriere volcanic eruptions.
Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Global Affairs and Principal of the UWI Open Campus, Dr Luz Longsworth, told an online forum to outline UWI’s response to the disaster that current and former UWI students from across the diaspora have already shown interest in donating funds and items towards the relief effort, with the university already setting up bank accounts both regionally and internationally to accept funds.
She said: “There has been a real coming together of not just the UWI community present, but the alumni and the diaspora. We have a couple of ways for persons who maybe not in the region, to contribute – the UWI Alumni Association through the office of the Director of Alumni Affairs, has set up a donation site on their own webpage, and that allows alumni internationally, or anyone, to donate through that portal.
“The American Foundation of the UWI also has set up a system which would allow persons in North America to donate through the American Foundation for the UWI website, or even to mail in cheques.”
Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hillary Beckles pledged UWI’s technical assistance in the form of engineering personnel from the campuses who will be deployed to the volcano-stricken mainland to help bring utility services back online.
Sir Hilary told the forum: “Our engineering faculty at St. Augustine Campus, in particular, is on stand-by; the principal there [Professor Brian Copeland] is very knowledgeable about these issues, we have been mobilizing our engineering crew in the aftermath of hurricanes and this is what we do normally.
“We have an action-ready orientation from the engineering faculty to participate, so it’s a matter of coordinating the logistics of movement. I know there is no aircraft supply but I know there [are] regular shipments, the boating system is operational, but what we do [is] we marry our university capacity with the indigenous capacity, the capacity on the ground there in the country and we coordinate the needs and so on.”
Dr Francis Severin, Co-Chair of the UWI’s Emergency Management at UWI, said that the university’s Disaster Preparedness and Hazard Management Protocol had long been designed as the blueprint for how the university responds to any natural or man-made disasters. The protocol not only establishes how UWI will assist affected citizens who are at the epicentre of the event, but also students who are directly or indirectly affected while they are studying.
Dr Severin said: “Given the fact that the communications infrastructure had not been affected, email messages have been sent to individual students, staff, and all semester 2 teaching staff, to alert them of the situation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and that courtesies for extensions for assignments and due dates will be in effect. That is of course with no penalty applied.
“We have done that in other disasters as well, including COVID. This has been communicated to the affected students.”
(SB)
