The Del­e­ga­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union to T&T has been recog­nised with an award for its sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to this coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment over four decades.

The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the Eu­ro­pean Union and T&T be­gan in 1976 with a fo­cus on in­fra­struc­ture and has since evolved over the years in­to an equal part­ner­ship that tack­les a broad spec­trum of is­sues to ad­vance the na­tion’s so­cial and eco­nom­ic frame­work.

The award was pre­sent­ed by SWF&CO In­ter­na­tion­al Pub­lic Re­la­tions to Pe­ter Cavendish, Am­bas­sador of the Eu­ro­pean Union to T&T.

This was in recog­ni­tion of the EU’s “Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing Part­ner­ships with Lo­cal Com­mu­ni­ties and NGOs”.

These are key ar­eas of the EU Del­e­ga­tion’s work for which they re­ceived the award:

1. Build­ing re­silience in the SME Sec­tor through ini­tia­tives and pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment that en­cour­age the coun­try’s com­pet­i­tive busi­ness strat­e­gy.

2. Ad­dress­ing the needs of the most vul­ner­a­ble groups and com­mu­ni­ties through pover­ty re­duc­tion pro­grammes, which in­clud­ed 600 mi­cro-projects ben­e­fit­ing over 10,000 par­tic­i­pants, and strength­ened the so­cial ser­vices de­liv­ery unit of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

3. Strength­en­ing of Med­ical Lab­o­ra­to­ry Ser­vices in the Caribbean and fund­ing of the Na­tion­al HIV/ AIDS strate­gic plan pro­gramme.

4. De­fend­ing hu­man rights, equal­i­ty and di­ver­si­ty to­geth­er with lead­ing ad­vo­ca­cy groups ded­i­cat­ed to pro­tect­ing LGBTQI, women, youth, mi­grant and oth­er mar­gin­alised com­mu­ni­ties.

5. Sup­port­ing cru­cial in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment to en­cour­age growth in var­i­ous sec­tors, in­clud­ing works on the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, Navet Dam, UWI St. Au­gus­tine cam­pus build­ings and rur­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion.