Ger­ard Best

The Caribbean tech­nol­o­gy rev­o­lu­tion has be­gun.

Bright­Path, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with its cor­po­rate part­ner Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, has launched Tech­Link, an ini­tia­tive of­fer­ing Caribbean-wide com­mu­ni­ty-based train­ing in dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ation. One hun­dred-plus young per­sons and small busi­ness en­tre­pre­neurs par­tic­i­pat­ed in a full day of work­shops at the re­gion­al launch in St George's, Grena­da on No­vem­ber 30.

"Our vi­sion is to take the seed plant­ed in Grena­da and trans­late it in­to Caribbean apps, Caribbean books, Caribbean pho­tos, Caribbean videos, and Caribbean so­lu­tions to Caribbean chal­lenges," said Bevil Wood­ing, Founder and Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of Bright­Path.

He told the Guardian that Tech­Link will run in coun­tries across the re­gion from Be­lize to Suri­name, tar­get­ing youth, par­ents, se­niors, ed­u­ca­tors and small busi­ness own­ers.

"The launch of Tech­Link in Grena­da is the be­gin­ning of a rev­o­lu­tion in com­mu­ni­ty-based tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven ed­u­ca­tion for the re­gion. We're part­ner­ing with on-the ground com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers in St Lu­cia, Bar­ba­dos, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Do­mini­ca, and Montser­rat," ex­plained Bright­Path Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Bevil Wood­ing dur­ing the launch.

The old clich� is that tech­nol­o­gy, by it­self, solves noth­ing. But Tech­Link aims to demon­strate how, when cou­pled with ef­fec­tive lead­er­ship and di­rect­ed at re­al hu­man needs, tech­nol­o­gy can change the for­tunes of a whole re­gion.

"Tech­Link is about link­ing re­al peo­ple to re­al op­por­tu­ni­ty by ex­pos­ing the prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion of broad­band in terms that peo­ple can re­late to in re­al life: cre­at­ing and shar­ing con­tent, tap­ping in­to es­sen­tial in­for­ma­tion and ser­vices or even ex­pand­ing mar­kets for on­line busi­ness­es," Wood­ing said.

In that sense, the pro­gramme has less to do with tech­nol­o­gy and more to do with the val­ue of the Caribbean con­tent, said Rhea Yaw Ching, cor­po­rate vice pres­i­dent of sales and mar­ket­ing at Colum­bus.

"His­to­ry has shown us that de­liv­er­ing fan­tas­tic speeds at af­ford­able prices doesn't nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late in peo­ple's minds to any re­al val­ue un­til they make the con­nec­tion on how that ul­ti­mate­ly makes their lives bet­ter. That's the hope of Tech­Link."

Colum­bus sub­sidiary Flow Grena­da re­cent­ly up­grad­ed their res­i­den­tial broad­band pack­ages and now boasts speeds up to 100 Mbps.

"We're go­ing be­yond just pro­vid­ing the pipe, we're help­ing peo­ple dis­cov­er what they can do with it," said Yaw Ching.

"We are a cre­ative peo­ple, and the op­por­tu­ni­ty is ripe for that cre­ativ­i­ty to be more ful­ly ex­pressed in our dig­i­tal space," Wood­ing said.