Dear Editor,
The Guyanese Diaspora plays a crucial role in Guyana’s development through remittances, transfer of knowledge, investment, and philanthropy. The diaspora can play an even more significant role in the skills needed for development and help alleviate the skills-gap and skills mismatch with a more structured mechanism and diaspora policy.
But there is no website dedicated to informing, attracting, or guiding the diaspora; there is no diaspora policy and no clearly articulated diaspora strategy like other countries in the region and around the world have developed. The following excerpt from the attached article highlights these points: “In an online seminar on June 8, 2022, sponsored by the Guyana Business Journal, the head of the Diaspora Unit at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation, Rosalinda Rasul, told the audience that Guyana does not have dedicated people to develop content and manage a website to engage the Guyanese diaspora”.
While Ms. Rasul indicated that the diaspora unit was working with individual investors and philanthropists who return to Guyana, Dr. Vibert Cambridge, a panelist called for a broader more inclusive and a less elitist approach to the diaspora engaging process. “Recognizing that Guyana does have a clearly defined strategy to engage its diaspora, panelist at the online seminar, Dr. David Lewis, pointed out that Guyana should look to countries like El. Salvador and the Dominican Republic for a roadmap to engage the diaspora to avoid continued mistakes of the past.” This article is relevant to the transformation of Guyana the drive for positive social change in Guyana.
Sincerely,
Dr. Wayne Forde