National Youth Ambassador, Esquire Henry was selected as Antigua and Barbuda’s representative to the Caribbean Development Bank’s Future Leader Forum.
Henry attended the 54th annual meeting of the Board of Governors held in Canada last week June 17 to 20 where he met with his peers from across the region who make up the youth network.
The Future Leaders programme was designed to be a catalytic intervention empowering Caribbean youth to address the challenges facing the region.
The network consists of 19 young people who are leaders, change agents and innovators in areas that are critical to realising resilience and sustainable development, according to the CDB, and will serve two core roles – advocates for the promotion and realisation of the youth and sustainable development agendas and advisors on programming and projects.
At the meeting, the delegates took part in Youth for Innovation and Resilience (Youth FIRE) programme which was held under the theme “Empowered Youth—Partners in Resilient Prosperity.”
Henry told Observer media: “This is my second year being a member of the Caribbean Development Bank’s Future Leaders Network. My key takeaway from the new FIRE Forum, which runs at the same time of the 54th general meeting, is the need to be more involved in disability infrastructure.
“For example, we advocate for persons who experience disabilities but is the infrastructure in our society really up to par for them and I don’t think this is the case and this is something as young people, we need to look into to advocate on behalf of.”
Other areas of focus for the Caribbean Development Banks’s Future Leaders Network (CFLN) include sustainable energy, resilient infrastructure, peaceful societies, citizen security and economic empowerment.
“One of the other results from the youth forum was a presentation of our outcome statement, which was presented to the officials of the bank as well as the ministers who were present at the meeting where we let them know how we feel on certain issues,” he added.
That outcome document, he said, was not yet released to the public at the time of writing.
