Four students of The University of the West Indies, (UWI), Mona have been awarded the inaugural UWI Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) scholarships. They are graduate students: Ms. Gerarda Ramcharansingh, Mr. Kevin Douglas, and Mr. Dorlan Burrell pursuing the Masters of Science in the Disaster Management programme and Ms Odene Baker, an undergraduate student in the Department of Geography & Geology.
 
The UWI-CCRIF Scholarship Programme is part of CCRIF’s Technical Assistance Programme which is designed to help Caribbean countries deepen their understanding of natural hazards and catastrophe risk, and the potential impacts of climate change on the region, thereby leading to increased regional climate change resilience through improved risk management. In its first year, 2010/11, the UWI-CCRIF programme provided scholarships worth US$ 66,000 to six students at the University pursuing studies in areas related to disaster management.
 
The scholarship cheques were presented to the students at a handing over ceremony held at the Mona Campus recently. In his opening remarks, University Registrar, Mr. William Iton expressed the University’s appreciation to CCRIF for the assistance to build the region’s capacity for effective disaster management.  He indicated that the increased collaboration between UWI and CCRIF would result in the further development of forward-looking solutions geared towards reducing the risks created by the pronounced regional natural hazard landscape.
 
Dr Simon Young, CEO of Caribbean Risk Managers Ltd – CCRIF’s Facility Supervisor, reiterated CCRIF’s interest in strengthening its partnership with UWI. He indicated that “CCRIF hopes to be able to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with UWI to work in other areas that support disaster risk reduction – for example, by providing CCRIF’s catastrophe (CAT) modelling tools to the University as a means of building technical capacity in the region in the areas of catastrophe modelling and risk management.”
 
Also attending the ceremony were UWI Professor Alvin Wint, Pro Vice Chancellor (PVC), Undergraduate Studies and Professor Ronald Young, PVC, Post-Graduate Studies who both stressed the importance of enhancing the regional capacity in disaster management as we continue to pursue the path to sustainability.  Others present included the two other recipients of the scholarship, Ms. Wanda Monrose and Mr Rhon-Paul Soltau from, the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the St Augustine Campus, Trinidad.