FORMER Gunnedah resident, Dr Annie Egan, has joined the Australian Volunteers for International Development (AVID) program launched recently in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
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The daughter of well-known local couple, Val and Neville Egan, Annie attended St Xavier’s School and St Mary’s College.
Annie will spend a whole year volunteering in the Grenadines, a Caribbean island chain of more than 600 islands in the Windward Islands. They are divided between the island nations of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada.
Annie Egan and fellow Australian, Nicolas Harris, have taken up their assignments as the first volunteers under the program, where Annie will be the Renewable Energy Programme Officer at the Community College for a year.
Regional director of Austraining International, Sally Brokensha, said the group is delighted that the program has been so warmly welcomed to St Vincent and the Grenadines.
“I know both Nick and Annie are really keen to get started on their assignments and are looking forward to tackling some of the issues of climate change that are confronting this very beautiful island,” she said at the launch in Kingstown.
Annie Egan told I-Witness News that the Community College has been trying to develop a renewable energy program.
“So I am going to be developing resources, organising courses and also looking at renewable energy in St Vincent and decide how best the college can serve in bringing that to fruition,” she said.
“I have worked in energy in Australia for about nine years and recently completed a doctorate in energy efficiency.”
She also has a master’s degree in renewable energy.
“So I am very keen on both sides, both demand and supply side of renewable energy,” she said.
The Minister of National Mobilisation, Maxwell Charles, welcomed the volunteers to country.
“I want to applaud the Australian government in this venture in extending a hand of help and expertise in the different areas,” he said.
“ This, I know, is going to enhance the national development of St Vincent and the Grenadines.
“Australian aid to countries around the world has made a positive contribution to poverty reduction and sustainable development and also in enhancing cross-cultural
tolerance and understanding”.
Austraining International is a South Australian government owned specialist project management organisation established in 1991.
It mobilises about 600 volunteers annually to 26 countries and has regional offices in seven locations.
There are also Australian volunteers in Dominica, Suriname, the Dominican Republic, Belize, and two will soon be placed at the CARICOM Secretariat in Guyana.
The focus in the Caribbean is the impact on climate change and disaster risk reduction, as well as economic resilience.
