CB:
Many of us in the diaspora decided to help finance it and put resources into it. Since no one stepped forward to lead the Caribbean Science Foundation, I ended up becoming the interim Executive Director, and today I am still interim [laughs] because the job does not pay.
CB:
CW:
What a noble goal, what a noble initiative, what a noble contribution that you go abroad, that you are educated in an institution of eminence and excellence, but you do not forget where you came from. You see the need to give back something to the youth and to your country. I note recently that you were given the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Barbados. How do you interpret the achievement of that award in the context as a motivating factor for young people?
CB:
But I think there are also motivating factors for those who come after, to understand and to believe that there are things that can be achieved by our is people because so much of what is written about other people. And I think that it is important that within the context of our own environment, we can say that there is a Professor Cardinal Warde who was born here in Barbados, who is a Professor at MIT, the Premier Institution of Technology and Engineering in the world, and he was given a national award for that achievement.
The awards I have been given in Barbados and elsewhere were not things that I was seeking. I feel indeed very honoured, blessed that Barbados has recognised what I’m trying to do, but the job is not yet done and the awards have come too early, but I appreciate them nonetheless [laughs]. The rewards should be given after the job is done, but, “Barbados thank you” and I thank the Prime Minister for doing that, but you similarly - we share the same award at the same time. We’re both Companions of Honour at the same time. It’s better to have your flowers now, than to have them on your grave [laughs] so my friend is right ,we’ll take the flowers now and we say thank you.
CW:
You’re absolutely right, role models are very, very important. They have been important to me and in the Caribbean Science Foundation, we run a programme called SPISE - Student Programme for Innovation in Science and Engineering. In addition to teaching them, we have two levels of Calculus, two levels of Physics, Biochemistry; we’ve also got Robotics, Renewable Energy and Computer Programming and we teach Mandarin, the Chinese language. Every week we bring in two role models to talk to the students about their careers in Science and Technology and we’re already seeing the students asking the right questions and considering disciplines in areas for careers that they would not have considered before.
CW:
You’re opening their eyes to a new world. Clearly your keen interest in entrepreneurship is something that is admirable, but in the context of the Caribbean we face a reality. One of our realities is lack of venture capital for investment in entrepreneurship and the small price of our traditional Caribbean market. How are you addressing these constraints within the context of the Caribbean Science Foundation, and where do you see the future of entrepreneurship in the region? This is one of the more difficult problems that the Caribbean Science Foundation is trying to tackle. On the educational front we’ve done quite well, we have about four programmes - the SPISE programme is only one of them. We have a STEM CT training workshop where we do workshops in St Vincent, Antigua, Jamaica and Barbados. We’ve got the Sagicor Visionaries Challenge. Sagicor picks up all the money, but we write the rules for the programme; we provide the mentors and the judges and we started Robotics camps in Barbados for students between 9 and 13 years old. We’ve done that for two consecutive years so on the educational front the Caribbean Science Foundation is making a big difference. Just recently, the Caribbean Science Foundation announced that it is going to make an award of 20k Euros to a Bajan company in the ICT area (Information and Communication and Technology) area and it’s a full profit company and it’s a grant, and we are not even taking any equity interest in the company. But if you read the website at the Caribbean Science Foundation (www.CaribbeanScience. org, ) you will see that we have something called Caribventure where our goal is to put together basically a venture capital fund, where we would invest only in technology companies, fully staged
companies. Nicholas Brathwaite, one of our board members, is helping to design that programme. The Caribventure doesn’t have any money in it as yet, but we are working towards solving that problem and we would venture those companies. We don’t want to finance ma-pa shops, we are looking for a company that can have $70 million and $50 million in revenues the next five (5) to ten (10) years. Which means that we have to fund a team of people not just one person and we have to mentor them and make sure that they get advice and assistance from the diaspora, because I did it to solve this problem.
CB: But it also seems to me in that context that
we need to begin to look at the wider market. We need to see the diaspora as part of our market and to begin to understand that the five or seven million people we have in the Caribbean is just the nucleus - is just the beginning of where we should be looking and to a large extent you are not going to establish these companies generating 50-70 million dollars a year unless you open your eyes to the reality that we live in a global market place
CW:
Exactly!
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