Film competition launched to promote Caribbean foods

Last Updated on Saturday, 26 December 2015, 21:00 by GxMedia

A region-wide youth competition has been launched to promote value-added foods with 10,000 euros in prizes up for grabs.

The 2^nd Caribbean Young Professionals Science and Agriculture Film and Video Competition was unveiled Thursday evening at the Caribbean Week of Agriculture in Georgetown, Guyana.

The competition is open to teams of individuals – no more than four – between the ages of 18 and 35 and is being held under the theme “Adding Value to Local Foods.”

According to Caribbean Council for Science and Technology’s (CCST) Lovaan Superville, one of the objectives was to “raise the excitement level of the general public about the production and consumption of local foods including healthy options.”  

“Although the competition targets youths to enter the competition a secondary group is targeted through the outcomes which would be the videos or the animations which would be showcased at the end of the competition.

A stated goal is the use of the competition as a mechanism to promote the importance of science, technology and innovation for improving agricultural performance and supporting economic development.

Director of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) Michael Hailu said he believed that the competition would not only help people understand the potential of agriculture but also encourage them to have their success stories told. The CTA is one of the entities partnering with CCST to host the competition.

The director also urged that there be participation from Guyana this time around since there was none in the inaugural competition.

There are 16 participating countries including Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Suriname. However all submissions must be in English and no longer than five minutes.

The competition will be run over 10 months with interested individuals having up to January 30, 2014 to enter their concept and those shortlisted have up to June 2014 to do the final submission.

Interested individuals can visit the CCST website at ccss-caribbean.org for more details on the competition.