By Arica Hill
Remember, for a moment, what you wanted your career to be when you were a child. Your childlike mind filled with the wonder of the world, gathering all this information about how the world works and how you fit into it. Remember how you knew, for a certainty, that you could save the world? And then someone, maybe your teacher or your parents or even TV told you that there were only a few lanes you could join. You could be a teacher, a doctor, lawyer, engineer. The options were slim but you carved your imagination and your joy into those boxes so you could fit.
Imagine if, instead, you could be the superhero you actually always wanted to be?
Maybe that’s too broad, but that is the premise of the EAG’s Green Jobs Symposium. Held annually on the last Friday in January the EAG engages youth from secondary schools and tertiary level institutions to remind them that the potentials of their wildest imaginations can become a reality.
This year, hosted on January 26, we brought together six environmental and natural heritage experts from Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, and Barbados to speak about the jobs that they do every day, and how students who are embarking on new careers can enter these fields.
Of course, we have our biases, and so were excited to hear from Joshel Wilson, the EAG’s Wildlife Officer about how he moved from Grenada to Antigua to work for us following his studies at St George’s University. Carla Daniel from the Barbados Sea Turtle Project called conservation “a trap”. She said that once you get outside into the wild it is impossible to remain the same. Carla got “trapped” saving turtles 19 years ago as a volunteer and is now working to set up an organisation that can manage turtles and other species of interest in Barbados. That volunteerism trap also caught Desley Gardner who is an Archaeologist with the National Parks Authority. Trekking about with Dr Reg Murphy since she was 15, Desley is now the only female archaeologist on island, and she loves seeing how our history can inform our future decisions.
Jeanelle Brisbane from WildDominique in Dominica really wanted to work with large animals like lions and elephants. Instead, she started doing research on the Mountain Chickens in Dominica following Hurricane Maria because she was concerned about the population. Three years later she is still traversing forests looking for this critically endangered frog and working to ensure that they are not wiped from the face of this earth.
Dr Linroy Christian had a more traditional approach and studied biochemistry at UWI, Cave Hill. He now manages the Department of Analytical Services and spoke passionately about finding solutions to environmental problems that can have a direct impact on human health. This was supported by Itajah Simmons who encouraged students to consider how to create “healthy buildings” and move towards green technologies that are becoming a watchword within the world.
There is so much fear surrounding the possibility of living out your dream. Probably because it feels like there won’t be space in the world to accommodate that. But as the Caribbean faces its own vulnerability to climate change, and grapples with consistent biodiversity loss, youth of today need to consider these non-traditional fields.
And this is why the Coordinator for this year’s Green Jobs Symposium was such a gem. Trinity Archibald attended the first Green Jobs Symposium in 2022 as an Environmental Science student at the Antigua State College. At the time, she was thinking of becoming a pharmacist and took the course as a “pleasant elective”. Because of what she saw at the Symposium, Trinity chose to volunteer with the EAG. In the two years since, Trinity has been trained in invasive species monitoring, has assisted with surveys of landbirds and seabirds, has contributed to the Antigua Racer census, and helped with monitoring of nesting sea turtles. She is now interning with the EAG and is eagerly awaiting August 2024 when she will head off to UWI Cave Hill to start her journey as a wildlife ecologist.
I could be biased (again) but I suspect that being exposed to the wonders of the green industry changed her trajectory. I think she got “trapped”.
The 2024 Green Jobs Symposium was made possible through the support of the Open Society Foundation, CANARI, and Fauna & Flora.
