The Gilbert Agricultural & Rural Development Center (GARDC) is a leading agricultural enterprise training facility, targeting youth and women providing positive employment alternatives. Winner of the Inter-American award for the participation of women in Rural Development 1998-99, in international public recognition of the important contributions to the development of agriculture and to improving the quality of rural life.GARD Center is a project of The Methodist Church in the Caribbean and the Americas (MCCA).
The Gilbert Agricultural & Rural Development, GARD Centre (a leading NGO here in Antigua/Barbuda) has teamed up with the International Youth Foundation, to improve the path to employment among the nation’s at risk youth.
The program is part of the Caribbean Youth Empowerment Program (CYEP), funded through the U.S. Agency for International Development/Barbados & the Eastern Caribbean office. The initiative will provide a range of opportunities in job training, entrepreneurship and job placement to 165 unemployed or underemployed young people, ages 17 to 25 (also includes first time job seekers). Other locals partners involved in the program are the Directorate of Gender Affairs and the Antigua and Barbuda Institute for Continuing Education (ABICE).
More specific to our region, CYEP is a two-year regional initiative that promotes youth employability in Grenada, Jamaica, as well as Antigua and Barbuda. It is the first award provided by Youth: Work, a global program established in 2008 to assist USAID missions and bureaus to access IYF’s youth employability programs and expertise.
IYF recently secured additional Youth: Work support for employability programs in Morocco and Jordan. CYEP is based upon entra21, an IYF initiative with the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) to expand successful job training and job placement programs among at-risk youth in Latin America and the Caribbean.
At the end of the program it is estimated that 700 young people in Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Lucia and Jamaica will be equipped with technical/vocational skills and complementary life skills to sustain their livelihoods. For more information on the International Youth Foundation, visit www.iyfnet.org
The GARD Centre has fifteen years of experience in training youths and is owned and managed by the Trust of the Methodist Church in the Caribbean & the Americas MCCA). GARDC evolved as an entity from a two year pilot project which was implemented in 1989 as a collaborative effort amongst the MCCA, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)/Canada Training Awards Project (CTAP), and the Government of Antigua-Barbuda.
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