The Caribbean Development Bank’s Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF) is set to launch the Caribbean’s first online certified community engagement course for development practitioners on October 22, 2025. The course aims to equip community-development professionals and civil society leaders with the tools needed to strengthen community participation throughout project cycles. Participants will learn how to mobilize community assets, engage marginalized groups, follow protocols for working with Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, and co-create locally led solutions aligned with regional development priorities and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Human rights lawyer Marcus Goffe emphasized the importance of engaging communities in an open, transparent, and respectful manner, noting that the course contributes to breaking from the colonial past and decolonizing community engagement in the Caribbean. The Centre for International Development and Training (CIDT) at the University of Wolverhampton, a long-term partner of the Caribbean Development Bank, co-developed the course. Graduates will receive certification from the University and join a regional network of community development professionals. Over 350 participants from around the world have already registered for the gender-responsive program.
Richardo Aiken, Community Development Specialist at CDB, explained that the course provides participants with the knowledge, skills, and tools to foster inclusive, participatory, and sustainable development at the community level, tailored to the Caribbean context. The course responds to training needs identified by communities during the implementation of the BNTF, the Bank’s flagship poverty reduction program. George Yearwood, Portfolio Manager of the BNTF, noted that the consistent demand for such training motivated the development of a sustainable approach to extend the impact of BNTF beyond individual project cycles.
The course builds on the 2021 Community Engagement Guidance Note (CEGN), developed collaboratively by the BNTF, the Community Disaster Risk Reduction Trust Fund (CDRRF), CIDT, and regional practitioners. The CEGN addresses challenges in local-level community engagement and provides strategies to enhance inclusion and practitioner skills across CDB’s 19 Borrowing Member Countries. Local practitioners contributed extensively to the course design, providing case studies, materials, and lessons learned from previous BNTF and CDRRF projects, ensuring the content is practical, sustainable, and locally relevant.
Community engagement in this context emphasizes collaboration rather than top-down implementation. Participants such as Cher Akoi, Community Liaison Officer for BNTF Suriname, highlighted that local input was central to designing course elements that ensure sustainable, locally owned, and transformative outcomes. The BNTF continues to address critical needs identified by vulnerable communities, including water and sanitation, education, livelihood enhancement, and access and drainage, while integrating cross-cutting themes of climate change adaptation and gender equality.
