The Board of Directors of the Caribbean Development Bank has approved funding to assist the University of the West Indies (UWI) in fulfilling its mandate to further develop a modern, integrated Faculty of Sport across the UWI System.

The project is intended to enhance the Faculty’s capacity for strategic business development planning, in order to increase responsiveness to the needs of the Bank’s Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs), and to advance the Region’s sports industry.  It will also support greater gender-equitable access to UWI programmes, especially for male students, and will promote female involvement in non-traditional sport disciplines.

“The Caribbean has been making its mark in the international sporting world.  In fact, three of our BMCs top the list of countries with the highest Olympic medal count per capita from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games,” said Daniel Best, Director, Projects Department, CDB. 

“We therefore have a responsibility to the people of the Region to develop a more robust higher education sports programme that will deliver teaching, research and training in various sporting disciplines, and establish world-class sporting facilities, equipment and technology to fully prepare the next generation of high-performing athletes for record-breaking success, he added.

CDB will provide USD210,000 for the project, which will support UWI’s Faculty of Sport’s thrust to further promote and represent the institution as a regional university (One UWI) with four fully integrated Academies of Sport across the Region.  Its scope includes surveying physical infrastructure and equipment, and facilitating alignment among the Academies of Sport with the Bank’s BMCs, private sector, civil society and international partners, including regional and global sports associations. The project will also include the piloting of two innovative methodological approaches to enhance UWI’s capacity to effectively establish athlete-centred, socially inclusive and integrated programmes for male and female athletes across the UWI Academies of Sport.

The Sport for Development Initiative aligns with the objective of CDB’s Education and Training Policy and Strategy to create systems that are responsive to national, regional and global labour markets. It will also promote and reinforce Caribbean regional cooperation.