A multimedia web-based research resource on Dominica’s History, a signature event which forms part of History Week 2015, was officially launched on Tuesday.
The project and event is a collaborative effort between the Division of Culture in the Ministry of Youth, Sports, Culture & Constituency Empowerment and Create Caribbean Inc, Research Institute at the Dominica State College (DSC).
“The signature event for history week is the launching of the Road to Independence Research Project which includes an interactive website, dominicahistory.org,” Chief Cultural Officer, Jacinta David said while addressing the launching ceremony held at the DSC Auditorium. “In this regard the division of culture engaged the services of Create Caribbean Inc headed by Dr. Schuyler Esprit on this project.”
According to David, an interactive website was developed because of the great use of social media and the internet by young people.
“The Dominica history road to Independence website will serve as a tremendous resource for the students, this is a clear example of the creation of web base resources to support classroom base teaching in the months and years ahead,” she stated.
David stated further that the Division of Culture will continue to make historical and cultural information available online for the benefits of students and the general public.
“This is history in the making,” she said.
She encouraged students, the youth and others to visit the website and interact with it. “Help to create new information,” she noted.
David made it clear that the Road to Independence Project, though launched on Tuesday, will continue in the weeks and months ahead.
“You students have an opportunity to engage with the project and help to build up the information data base,” she said.
She revealed that this year History Week is being celebrated under the theme “The Road to Independence; 1950-1978”.
“We decided ‘On the Road to Independence’ as this year’s theme because many young people are not aware of all the details, the stories, the anecdote in relation to Dominica’s march towards independence,” she explained. “This year’s theme aims to address this state of affairs in so doing more people particularly the young will have a better grasp of local, regional and global events which forms part of the independence story and place the post-independence period and development process in their proper context.”
Meantime Esprit said history week is an educational week and is encouraging all Dominicans to be involved.
“We want the entire public to be involved, but we also want to specifically target students of primary, secondary and tertiary education to really get more in touched with Dominican history,” Dr. Esprit said.
And according to her the most rewarding part of the experience is, “watching my students; my interns interact with the information themselves as they put this project together.”
“I hope that the students here and the ones who will see the project later on will have that same experience and want to contribute to it,” she noted.
She said following the launch of the project, for the next few weeks leading up to Independence Day (November 3) quite a bit of context will be added to the site.
Furthermore Dr. Esprit said one of the projects will be involving the general public.
“We want to really do what we call a History Harvest, so we will go to different communities that were really influential in the journey to Independence for a social, political, economic or cultural reason and we have identified about four of them…,” Dr. Esprit stated. “We will be making Town Hall meeting trips to these communities asking people to bring their family pictures, whatever pictures or stories they have to tell about what happened in their community relating to events surrounding Independence…or any type of social development that was happening between 1950 and 1978.”
Additionally she said, “So we will make four of these trips, our plans are to go to Grandbay , Mahaut, Portsmouth and Atkinson, and we may if we have time do one on the East Coast at La Plaine.”
History Week 2015 runs from Monday 12 October to Friday 19 October 2015.
More fantastic work from Dr Esprit! Her efforts are truly a blessing.
Only last week this same topic was being discussed in the US. Great move all involved. Much happened between 1950 – 1978 to be discussed and hand down to the next generation. I for one love history and will be involved. Take this subject seriously student. Knowing your history and how your country Dominica evolved in that period is a plus.