ST. GEORGE’S Grenada: Giving the Grenada Rural Enterprise Project high marks, Grenada’s Agriculture Minister, Gregory Bowen, speaks of poverty alleviation as one of Government’s major priorities that will seek to involve all communities in the mainstream. He was addressing a gathering on Sunday of over eighty participants from community organizations at what’s been dubbed the First Annual Community-Based Management encounter, which sought to review the Project. Mr. Bowen says Grenada and other small island States have had to encounter the hardships of dealing with policies dictated by the more industrialized World, which has been enriching itself to the detriment of the poor and dispossessed. He is hopeful that in Grenada, the Grenada Rural Enterprise Project will seek to reverse this trend by tackling poverty in a positive way, through the involvement of NGO’s, Community Based Organizations and Grass Root Organizations. The Grenada Rural Enterprise Project was introduced a year and a half ago with the aim of reaching out to communities with a high concentration of low-income families so that they can get involved in organized profit-making ventures. The Agriculture Minister told the gathering that Government is dealing with poverty at the heart of its agenda and it will always be an integral part of its planning. He further indicated that farmers will be among beneficiaries of the project, since they would have an avenue to get their produce manufactured for the export market. Noting that the world is changing ever so rapidly with today’s oil market throwing up a scare, Mr. Bowen urged the stakeholders and coordinators of the Project that they must be able to make a difference in alleviating poverty in Grenada, with the Government providing supporting mechanisms. A specific goal of the Grenada Rural Enterprise Project, among other things, is to reduce gender inequities. Through a demand-driven approach, it is expected to satisfy specific needs for both men and women for improved livelihoods, particularly young people, and to create conditions for equitable access of men and women to project resources and benefits. Reprinted from Caribbean Net News caribbeannetnews.com