CASTRIES, SAINT LUCIA – Thirty tourism officials and hoteliers participated in a workshop titled Promoting Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Caribbean Tourism Industry in Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia, September 14-16, 2009.

The workshop was developed by the Executive Secretariat for Integral Development (SEDI) of the Organization of American States (OAS) with support from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). The Young Americas Business Trust (YABT) , a not-for-profit organization working in cooperation with the OAS, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UN-ECLAC) also collaborated on the workshop, which is part of a larger OAS/SEDI CSR initiative.

Workshop participants represented fourteen of the OAS Caribbean Member States. Among them were tourism officials from Ministries of Tourism who have been involved with the OAS Small Tourism Enterprise Program. Others represented Tourism and Hotel Associations and small Saint Lucian hotel properties.

The objectives of the workshop were to create awareness of CSR and its relevance to the Caribbean tourism industry, build capacity in public sector representatives of the tourism industry, support and promote CSR in the private sector, build capacity in tourism practitioners in the Caribbean to engage in CSR activities integrating these practices into their operations and provide tools/resources to enable implementation of CSR initiatives in the Caribbean Tourism Industry.

Following the three-day workshop, participants are expected to initiate dialogue and action plans for implementing CSR strategies in their country’s tourism sector. Future workshops in the region are expected to create more awareness among stakeholders, particularly hoteliers, to identify ways in which small and medium tourism enterprises in the Caribbean can implement CSR towards economic, social and environmental benefits of a socially responsible approach to an organization’s operations.

Delivering the keynote presentation at the workshop’s opening was Mr. Hugh Riley, Secretary General of the Caribbean Tourism Organization. Additional presentations were made by Mr. McHale Andrew, Executive Vice President of the Saint Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association and Mr. Cletus Springer, Director of the Department of Sustainable Development at the OAS.

For more information about the CSR program, contact Zakaria ElGoumiri at zelgoumiri@oas.org.

For more information about YABT and activities aimed at supporting and providing opportunities for entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean, contact Luis Viguria at lviguria@oas.org or 202 458 6452.