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About Us

Caribbean Yard Campus is an educational enterprise that is designed to network traditional knowledge systems in the Caribbean.

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Cultural education from traditional communities

The great cultural diversity of the Caribbean has bequeathed to its people ways of being, seeing, knowing and doing that are informed by places of origin, historic conditions of arrival in the Caribbean and encounters with other cultures in this space. This body of experience, know-how, wisdom and values constitutes ‘traditional knowledge’ which has shaped the people and cultures of  the region.

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Harnessing traditional knowledge for community empowerment

Traditional knowledge, though often unaccredited in formal education, exerts a powerful influence on modern Caribbean society including on  the formal, western education system itself, with which it sometimes comes into conflict. Mass access to formal education, it should be noted, is a relatively recent experience, dating less than fifty years.

The organising agency for traditional knowledge is the communal ‘yard’.

Strategic allocation of resources for regional development

In the movement of peoples throughout the Americas, the Yard has been at the core of a lifelong learning space – from womb to wake – and represents, therefore, a valuable repository of traditional knowledge which, if tapped, could contribute significantly to a culturally coherent path for Caribbean development.

By creating intersections between traditional knowledge systems/experts and academic workers, Caribbean Yard Campus aims to produce culturally relevant approaches to development challenges in the region. This interface involves areas of educational content, methodology, ownership, authority and ultimately, empowerment in a knowledge-based society.

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Key pillars of our approach

  • Rich resources of traditional knowledge, creativity, diversity and intellect abound in community spaces recognised as “Yards”;
  • These resources are largely absent  from development plans for the region;
  • Sources of traditional knowledge   are threatened with extinction through neglect, migration, lack of documentation and natural demise;
  • Traditional knowledge resources are critical to the development of human and technological capacities in the region;
  • The release of these resources is central to promoting popular empowerment in a ‘knowledge economy’.
  • The strengthening of linkages between yards across the Caribbean will serve to create a coherent Caribbean-wide system of traditional knowledge in which individual communities become stronger and more viable.

Join our accredited training courses for indigenous Caribbean knowledge

At its initial level, Caribbean Yard Campus will be a network of existing programmes in cultural education based in, and run by, traditional communities and their institutions around the Caribbean region. To these existing educational programmes, Caribbean Yard Campus offers:

  1. Academic content and structure – Caribbean history, politics, art and culture, economics – face-to-face or online delivery
  2. Intellectual property guidance
  3. Programme management support – promotion, profitability, administration , inter-institutional linkages
  4. Certification
  5. Documentation
  6. Publication
  7. Resource building – e.g. on-line libraries, teaching material, product development
  8. Intra-regional networking and resource-sharing
  9. Extra-regional relations
  10. Representation and advocacy

 

At the innovative level, Caribbean Yard Campus will plant new programmes using relevant indigenous technologies, community structures and values to create intersections or ‘crossroads’ for development in any aspect of Caribbean life. 

750+
people have taken part in our programmes
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Our goals and objectives

Goal #1: To provide access to sources of Caribbean traditional knowledge (CTK)

Understandings and insights, customs and technologies, wisdom and philosophies accumulated by the peoples of the Caribbean over centuries of living in the region.

Objective #1a: To create a curriculum based on CTK

Objective #1b: To offer courses to the public based on CTK

Goal #2: To help mainstream traditional knowledge-bearers

Objective #2a: To engage knowledge-bearers as experts in the sharing of their knowledge

Equality of opportunity

CYC does not practise discrimination based on race, ethnicity, education, age, gender, religion or ability. We actively encourage participation in our programs by disadvantaged and marginal communities. We promote their participation by providing subsidies and sponsorship assistance where required.

Quality policy

CYC is committed to maintaining quality in delivery of its programmes, management systems, and interaction with the public and partnering organizations to ensure customer satisfaction. We have an open policy of communication between candidates, faculty and administration.