Dominican institutions highlight opportunities created by COVID-19

Head of University of the West Indies (UWI) Open Campus-Dominica, Dr. Kimone Joseph has said that COVID-19 has not only created drawbacks for the institution, but there are many opportunities brought about due to the pandemic.

Dr. Joseph, who spoke during the Financial Information Month (FIM) programme organized by the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) on state-owned DBS Radio on Thursday, said CVID-19 has forced the University to move their courses online, which resulted in a number of Dominicans in various parts of the world showing interest to take up courses with UWI.

“Dominicans and their friends showed interest in doing a course with UWI, people from various parts of the world including Chicago, London, showed interest in doing courses with UWI,” she said. “People had always wanted to do things like Creole, people who wanted their children to do it but were not sure how that could happen, COVID provided that opportunity now because we were innovative enough to move online and to market to people who were out of state, and so it has worked beautifully.”

According to Joseph, another opportunity is UWI’s certificate ceremony.

“People do programmes and you have to recognize them for their achievement,” she stated. “Universities started to talk as early as April…we have graduation in May. What are we going to do? We cannot put people at risk.”

She said that’s when the idea of a virtual ceremony came about.

“So we have been doing these since that time and so it means that somebody from Montserrat who would have never been able to participate, we have done it in a way that you can’t physically be there so you send your photograph and which we have a slideshow of your class and we have UWI officials who come and address, so you feel like you are in a real ceremony,” Joseph explained.

She went on to say that it is important for staff to plan and think outside the box, “and then to include the various publics so they know what’s going on and they feel comfortable with what’s going on and they feel a part of what is going on.”

Joseph added that some courses, including ballroom dancing had to be removed.

“We have curtailed our courses and we looked at those that just will demand a face-to face presence and we just cannot have that right now, so all our courses for the entire academic year to August 2021 have already been set and are being marketed,” she revealed.

Joseph further revealed that eight annual the E.O Leblanc memorial lecture and Former Speaker of the House of Assembly, Alix Boyd-Knights traditional cuisine will both be done virtually.

Special Projects and Communications Coordinator at the AID Bank, Josephine Dechausay Titre, said the COVID-19 pandemic showed that banking is a very fundamental part of life, “and that we needed to reconsider our priorities.”

“It allowed us to examine how we spend our time, how we maximize our time; it allowed us to review our spending habits, to reorganize our savings, to search for emerging opportunities and new income streams, to retool ourselves to strengthen our intellectual capacity and to pursue our talents,” Dechausay–Titre stated.

She believes that those are positive effects generated by the pandemic.

Dechausay–Titre said from an AID Bank standpoint, clients and credit officers had an opportunity to strengthen their relationship, “because so often we speak about communication and that communication should not only be left to the credit officers to reach out to the clients. The clients should find their way to us and we saw that developing and still developing.”

Opportunities were also provided, according to Dechausay-Titre, for people to “work out their loan situations.”

“We gave grace periods. In some instances, we had to undertake rescheduling exercises of the loans,” Dechausay- Titre noted. “We allowed clients to pay their debts via Mobanking, via credit and debit cards and we were pleasantly surprised to see clients actually coming in to pay their loans from way out of town.”

She added, “The recent line of credit that we have had, the 1 percent loan facility is proof of that. We have had over 3000 diverse applications.”

The AID Bank commended the clients who have responded to that facility and have seen the need to enhance their business along that line.

Business Development Officer at the National Development Foundation of Dominica (NDFD), George Challenger, also pointed to some positives which emerged from the COVID-19 situation.

“…We have seen a lot of innovation emerge during that period,” he stated. “For example, somebody could walk into a small business right now without a debit card and they could make a payment through the Mobanking system.”

He continued, “Before Covid-19 some of us didn’t even know that existed.”

Challenger said the NDFD always encourages innovation.

“We at the NDFD try not to have the same businesses all the time, for example, grocery shops…we sit with the person face-to-face,” he explained.

He said moving forward NDFD is putting plans in place to have an online application approach.

“We understand that we do have to go to the sites, we do have to follow-up on our business customers to know what they are doing. … Where exactly is it [the business] located, what they need to do to improve their business?”

The theme for FIM is ‘Financial Empowerment through Education’.