Today representatives of the Caribbean Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program and the Ministry of Economic Development met with stakeholders to present and discuss the CDB's Country Gender assessment Report and the UNDP supported Gender Equality and Empowerment Needs Assessment and Costing Initiative. Jay Coombs, Program Officer for Poverty Reduction and Democratic Governance at UNDP says the initiatives aim to effect gender equality and women's empowerment and contribute to poverty reduction in the country.

Jay Coombs - Program Officer, UNDP
"Essentially what we are working on is looking at the work of UNDO a well because we are looking at the costing of millennium goals number three which is gender equality and economic empowerment goal and looking at opportunities where the needs assessment or specifically the gender analysis that was conducted by CDB could impact or influence the decisions that the technical working group working on the costing and needs assessment so MDG three are working on. We are looking at areas of the role of women in our country, we are looking at the areas where both men and women are disadvantaged in education, the work force, school, primary, secondary and tertiary completion rates and how these have gender dimensions and most importantly the economic empowerment aspect of how it is that men and women are able to be gainfully employed in our country. What comes out of this meeting today or stakeholders' workshop are recommendations based on the findings on how more development efforts can be made in the area of reducing the gender disparity that exist, reducing the inequality that exists between men and women, boys and girls and also coming up specifically with the kinds of interventions that would be necessary to propel the country into 2015 at a level where there is success or some progress in this regard."

LOVEFM