标签： Barbados

Barbados’ agricultural sector is grappling with an escalating crisis of rampant monkey raids on commercial and small-scale farms, pushing the country’s Ministry of Agriculture to pursue cross-regional knowledge sharing and cutting-edge artificial intelligence interventions to curb mounting farmer losses. Agriculture Minister Dr. Shantal Munro-Knight openly admitted Wednesday during a press briefing at the ministry’s Graeme Hall headquarters that there is no silver bullet for this decades-long problem, which has plagued local farming alongside persistent praedial crop larceny for generations.

Calling both issues systemic challenges that have undermined agricultural productivity for decades, the minister emphasized that neither monkey-related crop destruction nor crop theft can be resolved with a single, quick intervention. To build a context-appropriate solution, Dr. Munro-Knight has spent recent months researching mitigation strategies used across neighboring Caribbean and South American nations, including on official visits to Guyana and Suriname. She found that monkey crop raids are a shared struggle across the region: no country has yet developed a one-size-fits-all definitive solution, with territories testing a range of differing approaches to manage the problem.

Currently, the Barbados Ministry of Agriculture is evaluating a suite of technology-driven mitigation tools, with artificial intelligence at the core of its exploratory work. Existing AI-powered options already deployed in other regions include AI-integrated drone monitoring, smart perimeter fencing that sends real-time alerts of intruding primates, and non-lethal deterrent systems that fire low-impact pellet sprays to scare monkeys away without causing harm. The minister stressed that cost accessibility is a non-negotiable factor during the evaluation process, noting that any effective solution must be affordable for working farmers to deliver real benefit.

To advance this work, the ministry will convene a closed expert stakeholder meeting in the second week of June, bringing together internal ministry teams, external agricultural partners, environmental experts and other relevant stakeholders to review existing mitigation measures and hash out new potential solutions that address both monkey damage and praedial larceny simultaneously.

Dr. Munro-Knight also addressed widespread public debate surrounding monkey culling, noting that while the government has already increased the financial bounty for approved culling operations, Barbados remains committed to balancing crop protection goals with humane wildlife management. She added that even with expanded culling, the current approach cannot address the scale of the primate population that is driving widespread crop damage across the island.

In a step to build better data for evidence-based policy, the ministry launched a new agricultural data collection platform on Wednesday in partnership with the state-owned Barbados Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (BADMC). Right now, officials lack the comprehensive data needed to accurately calculate the total economic loss that monkey raids inflict on the local agricultural sector each year. The new platform is designed to fix this gap by enabling systematic, comprehensive data collection in collaboration with local farming communities, giving officials clear figures to guide future strategy and resource allocation.

Monkey raids often leave crops damaged beyond recovery, forcing many local farmers to absorb significant, uncompensated financial losses year after year. Closing out her remarks, Dr. Munro-Knight underlined that solving the crisis cannot fall to the Ministry of Agriculture alone. Long-term sustainable solutions will require coordinated cross-agency collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, local academic institutions, and international development partners to deliver results that work for both farmers and wildlife.

As Barbados deepens its international cultural and educational collaboration networks, a seasoned senior education leader is making a final push to reshape how the country approaches student success, arguing that young people with talents outside traditional academics deserve the same resources and support to thrive as their academically gifted peers.

Idamay Denny, a former deputy chief education officer who led the Barbadian government’s flagship education reform initiative and currently serves as a strategic policy advisor for the Ministry of Education Transformation, shared her vision Wednesday during a cultural exchange showcase at the Oceana Innovation Hub. The event brought together students from New York’s Performing Arts Technology High School (PATHS) and two local Barbadian secondary schools, St Leonard’s Boys’ School and Coleridge and Parry School, for cross-cultural collaborative performances and skill-sharing.

Denny, who is set to officially retire from her government post this Friday, told attendees that the energy and creativity on display at the showcase reinforced her longstanding argument for overhauling education investment priorities. “What I saw here this morning reinforces what I tell the people in the ministry about investing in our students in terms of transformation,” she said. “We have to give you things that when you wake up in the morning, you want to get to school, and activities like what we saw here this morning are those kinds of activities.”

The showcase itself is a core component of a formal partnership between the Ministry of Education Transformation and the non-profit initiative I WILL GRADUATE, which hosted the PATHS student band on the island for a week of cultural exploration and collaborative learning with local young people. A reciprocal trip for Barbadian students to visit New York is already planned for the coming months.

A central pillar of Denny’s advocacy is challenging the outdated perception that creative fields like music and the arts are secondary extracurriculars rather than viable long-term career pathways. She emphasized that today, creative industries represent one of the most reliable routes to sustainable, well-paying employment for young people — a far cry from the norm when she was a student.

“Once upon a time when I was a girl going to school, nobody thought that music was going to be the thing that was going to carry you somewhere in life. We saw that as a little extra thing by the side. But nowadays, music is one of the biggest pathways to sustainable employment,” she explained.

Denny pointed to standout performances from PATHS students during the showcase to illustrate how the creative industries are evolving and opening doors for underrepresented groups. Highlighting a young female trumpet player who took the stage, she noted that the historically male-dominated professional music space is becoming far more inclusive. “Once upon a time then we saw bands… All men. But can you see from her that we can have some real good women playing in these bands. I will not be surprised if God allows me to live another 10 years to turn on my TV one day and see her playing in a band. She’s that good. Her heart is in it.”

She also reserved praise for a young PATHS vocalist, telling the audience she has the raw talent to become a global entertainment star. “When I saw you, I thought I would see you in one of those shows X Factor, The Voice… all of those things where people go and their whole career gets made in that moment while they’re there performing. I could see you on one of those shows winning and then becoming a big-time star.”

Across all her remarks, Denny stressed that schools must expand their definition of success to recognize and nurture skills beyond core academic subjects. “Yes, we want you to go to school and we want you to do well academically, but we don’t want you to think that academics is all. There are other things. You have other talents and we want to provide the mechanisms; we want to provide the infrastructure for you to do well with all those talents that you have,” she said.

Even as she prepares to leave her formal government role, Denny made clear she has no plans to step away from advancing arts-integrated education and international exchange. “This is only the beginning,” she said. “As I said, I am leaving this job… But I won’t be gone from this because I want to see this develop.”

She added that centering non-academic talent has been a core goal of her work shaping the ministry’s ongoing education transformation agenda. “We know that we have children who are not the best academically… We know there are children who have other talents. We know there are children who want to do other things. Why don’t we put the infrastructure in place to help those children do those things?”

The exchange also offered a powerful example of how creative collaboration builds soft skills like leadership that traditional classroom learning often struggles to foster, Denny noted. During the event, a student from St Leonard’s Boys’ led a workshop teaching visiting PATHS students how to play the traditional Barbadian steel pan — an experience Denny called a clear display of emerging leadership.

“That was leadership. We want children to develop leadership skills. It doesn’t only come from learning English and History and Science; it comes from this sort of activity too,” she said. “When I saw the boys from St Leonard’s standing beside their counterparts from PATHS, guiding them into how to play the scale on the steel pans, I saw leadership in action. These children are bright, brilliant children, but we don’t feel so. So we have to expand what we call brilliance.”

Closing her remarks, Denny thanked the PATHS delegation for selecting Barbados as the host for the exchange initiative and reaffirmed her commitment to supporting the growing partnership, including the upcoming reciprocal student trip to New York. “I am going to spend some time helping to develop this collaboration,” she said.

A man who had been flagged by police as a wanted suspect connected to severe criminal allegations is no longer at large, after turning himself in to authorities over the weekend. Shane Anthony Greene became the target of an official police wanted notice distributed to the public on Saturday, as law enforcement launched a push to locate and question him in relation to a series of serious criminal matters. The situation took a swift turn the very next day, when Greene presented himself at the Oistins Police Station. He was not alone during the surrender: a practicing attorney-at-law accompanied him to the station to support his voluntary handover to police. As of the latest updates, the suspect remains in police custody and is actively cooperating with investigators, who are continuing their work to untangle the details of the criminal case he is linked to.

Law enforcement authorities in Barbados are intensifying efforts to locate a missing 14-year-old teen, Tia Gittens, who vanished more than a week after walking out of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital against medical protocol. Gittens, who is currently under the legal care of the island’s Child Care Board, has not been spotted by friends, family or officials since May 22. According to official descriptions released by the police, the missing teenager stands approximately 5 feet 4 inches tall, has a slim build and a brown complexion. The last confirmed sighting of Gittens found she was dressed in casual loungewear: a pair of loose-fitting long grey sweatpants, a solid black sweater, and simple house slippers. With no significant leads developed in the case so far, local police have issued a wide-ranging public appeal for community assistance to help bring the teen home safely. Any member of the public who has encountered Gittens since May 22, or holds any information that could hint at her current location, is urged to reach out to law enforcement immediately. Tips can be submitted to the Central Police Station directly, the 24/7 police emergency hotline at 211, the anonymous Crime Stoppers tip line at 1-800-8477, or any local police district office closest to the informant. Investigators have emphasized that even small, seemingly insignificant pieces of information could prove critical to resolving the case quickly.

Two prominent Caribbean child welfare leaders have issued an urgent public warning following the spread of multiple viral videos showing uniformed school students engaging in explicit sexual activity, calling attention to a worrying trend of growing sexualisation among minors that risks causing long-term harm to young people’s futures.

Sean Clarke, chief executive officer of Supreme Counselling for Personal Development, and Melissa Savoury-Gittens, president of the National Organisation of Women (NOW), say three key factors are driving increasingly risky sexual behaviour among youth: unregulated social media consumption, heightened peer pressure, and critical gaps in consistent parental guidance.

Clarke emphasized that social media has grown to become one of the most powerful forces shaping how young people think, interact, make decisions, and understand the world around them. While peer pressure predates digital platforms, he explained that social media has amplified the problem by creating a culture where young people chase external validation through likes, shares and view counts. Many minors are willing to put themselves in compromising, explicit situations simply to gain online attention, a dynamic that would have been unthinkable for previous generations.

This risky behaviour is often rooted in low self-esteem, Clarke added. Young people grappling with feelings of inadequacy will frequently go to great lengths to fit in with peer groups and gain acceptance from popular classmates, even if that means participating in activities they know are inappropriate.

Savoury-Gittens echoed these concerns, noting that mainstream entertainment and television programming also normalize constant sexual content that shapes children’s expectations of behaviour from a young age. She also pointed out the stark gender double standard that emerges when explicit content of minors spreads online: while boys often face little social backlash and may even gain social status from the attention, girls are far more likely to face public shaming that leaves long-lasting emotional damage.

Both leaders acknowledge that underage sexual activity is not a new phenomenon, but stress that modern technology has completely transformed the scope and consequences of the issue. The widespread availability of smartphones and the virality of social media mean explicit content can spread across communities in hours, and once posted, it never truly disappears. Clarke warned that content shared as a child can follow people into adulthood, limiting educational and employment opportunities and undermining their ability to build the lives they want.

The advocates agree that families serve as the first and most critical line of defence against these harmful trends. Conversations about sexuality, self-worth, and personal responsibility need to start early in the home, with Clarke arguing that girls must be taught from a young age to value themselves and respect their bodies, while boys must learn to respect both their own boundaries and the boundaries of the girls around them. He also stressed that parents must model healthy behaviour for their children, noting that young people absorb the norms they see practiced by the adults in their lives.

Crucially, Clarke added that education about the risks of social media cannot be limited to children: many parents lack a full understanding of how digital platforms operate and the unique dangers they pose to minors, so adult-focused education programmes are also urgently needed.

Savoury-Gittens expanded on this framework, noting that schools, faith institutions and community organizations also have vital roles to play in supporting children. Many young children, especially those in primary school, hold deep trust in their teachers, giving educators unique access to have open conversations about healthy boundaries and safe online behaviour that children may not be as receptive to when coming from parents. Churches and community groups can also fill gaps in support by offering age-appropriate guidance beyond what is covered in standard school curricula.

Both leaders called for early intervention to identify at-risk children before they engage in harmful behaviour, urging parents and educators to watch for key warning signs: sudden shifts in behaviour including increased aggression, withdrawal from social activities, excessive secrecy around online activity, emotional instability, dropping grades, reduced motivation, and increased absenteeism from school. Clarke noted that these changes can often signal that a child is grappling with peer pressure, bullying, emotional distress, substance use, gang influence, or online manipulation.

Savoury-Gittens also pushed for greater participation in existing parenting support programmes, noting that while free resources are available, uptake remains consistently low. She shared an example of a local parenting initiative that saw attendance surge after organizers offered small financial incentives to participants, proving that removing barriers to access can dramatically increase engagement. Most importantly, she added, adults must not shy away from having difficult conversations with young people about inappropriate behaviour: the goal should be to protect children from harm rather than shame them for their mistakes, while still being clear about what boundaries exist to keep them safe.