The ninth Phenomenal Caribbean Women Symposium will be held this weekend at the Cabrits National Park in Portsmouth.
The symposium, hosted by VF Inc., is being staged on Saturday after a one-year absence.
CEO of VF Inc., Dr.Valda Henry, says her organization is collaborating with the Leve Dominik Inc. movement to host the event.
“Every year we bring in speakers; we take an equal number from Dominica and the region although this year, the split is a little uneven in the sense that we have 66.7% from Dominica being 2, and 1 from Trinidad and Tobago.”
She said that they will be hosting a mini-symposium within the symposium in the afternoon on the ‘nurturing and the protection of our children.’
“Every year the statistics reveal in Dominica that child abuse of all kinds is really our number one form of abuse,” Dr. Henry stated. “Children below sixteen, 85% of abuse cases are of children, out of that 85%, 75% are girls and 25% are boys and within that 75% again, another 75% being sexual abuse against the girls and the boys. And we know that there are much much more unreported cases.”
Henry said that the focus this year will be based on the abuse of children and hopefully, out of the symposium, they will be able to propose something that will be a more sustained effort at keeping the protection and the nurturing of children at the forefront.
Activities will also be held on Sunday for persons who wish to stay overnight.
“The fee is only $300 and that includes transportation from outside of VF Inc. to Portsmouth and back, it includes your light morning breakfast, a full snack, lunch, light afternoon snack, your magazine as well as your memento and every year, we give a different token.”
She said it costs an extra $50.00 per night for those who want to stay over. and that includes breakfast.
“And also if you stay on Saturday night, that also includes the island tour because we always go on an island tour with our speakers the next day and our overseas participants because we often time, have overseas participants and this year, we’ve opened it out to persons who stay over the Saturday night.”
The island tour which would typically start and end in Portsmouth has been changed this time around. Dr. Henry says they will start in Portsmouth and end at Pointe Michel. The reason for the Pointe. Michel finish is to give support the VF Inc. softball cricket team, ‘VF Inc. Hitters’ who have made it to the final of the National Softball Cricket Tournament which bowls off at 4:00 pm at Pointe. Michel.
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