A collaborative project undertaken by The University of the West Indies (The UWI), together with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management (FS) to support micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) through upskilling and digitalisation, was announced as a winner of the 2022 Caribbean sustainable tourism awards.

Since 2000, the region’s tourism development agency, the Caribbean Tourism Organization, has organised the awards to highlight the impactful, sustainable tourism actions by its member countries. The business adaptation programme, developed to assist tourism MSMEs in the Eastern Caribbean, received the 2022 awards in the category of tourism education and training, and was honoured at a virtual awards ceremony held on February 15.

In 2021, The UWI and FS were invited by the UNDP’s office for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean to partner to assist more than 300 MSMEs increase their digital skills resilience to external shocks and access new markets within the tourism value chain. The UNDP future tourism project was formulated as a response to the effects of COVID-19 on the tourism sector and its subsequent impact on MSMEs.

On receiving the award, Miguel Guirao, project coordinator from UNDP shared, “For UNDP, receiving this award was both an honour and a major milestone. We are committed to supporting the resilience of the region and MSMEs are key players in this sphere. Through our future-tourism project, UNDP was able to not only provide funding to help MSMEs digitally transform their businesses, but we also expanded the technical capacity of the region’s entrepreneurs. We are grateful for the support of our partners to achieve this honour that serves as a testament that we are achieving our goal of supporting Caribbean communities towards the achievement of the sustainable development goals.”