[Fwd: Regions youth forging path of heritage tourism]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Regions youth forging path of heritage tourism
Date: 17 Sep 2003 21:42:28 -0000
From: jayne@sidsnet.org
To: tourism-newswire@sidsnet.org

Region’s youth forging path of heritage tourism
Web Posted - Tue Sep 16 2003

THE traditional “sun, sea and sand” offering of the Caribbean may not be
enough to satisfy the tastes of today’s travellers.
Instead, alternative forms of tourism are needed to attract more
visitors to the region, Verna Barnett, Project Officer of Culture at
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO) said yesterday in an interview with the Barbados Advocate.

Barnett said the need for alternative tourism, coupled with high
unemployment rates among the youth, prompted UNESCO to develop a
programme promoting heritage tourism in five Caribbean territories.

The concept, Youth PATH (Poverty Alleviation Through Tourism and
Heritage), has so far provided training for over 100 youth between the
ages of 15 and 25 from Barbados, the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, St.
Vincent and the Grenadines. Participants are trained in tour-guiding,
craft production, languages and culinary techniques to enable them to
develop heritage sites in their communities as tourism centres. Quoting
staggering figures for youth unemployment globally (700 million),
Barnett said it was important to focus on imparting “life skills” to the
younger generation.

It is hoped this training will enable the youth to gain employment in
the tourism sector and ultimately to reduce poverty in Caribbean
communities.

The sites are established mainly in rural areas. For instance, in
Barbados, six sites have been identified, including Harrison’s Cave,
Welchman Hall Gully, Jack-in-the-box Gully and The Flower Forest. In St.
Lucia, PATH participants organise camp-outs which allow visitors to
observe nesting-turtles at night. “There are people who could be
targeted to come to the Caribbean if they knew about some of the
heritage tourism sites that are here,” Barnett told the Advocate. “Those
sites are not very well promoted at this point. People come primarily
now for the sun, sea and sand, but you have folks going to [other
countries] for trekking, to look at synagogues. They’re going to
experience other people’s language and culture,” noted the Project
Officer, adding that the region offered diverse cultures and history. A
mid-project workshop to review PATH’s progress got under way yesterday
at the Blue Horizon Hotel for over 40 participants enrolled in the
programme. The youth will also be
  introduced to opportunities for employment in the heritage tourism
sector.

SOURCE: Barbados Advocate
Received on Wed Sep 17 19:19:40 2003