OECS Secretariat, Castries, St. Lucia, April 17^th 2012,  The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Secretariat is conducting an OECS training workshop in St. Lucia, on Household Survey Methods, from 16^th – 20^th April, 2012 

Staff of National Statistics Offices in OECS countries, are among those expected to significantly benefit from the five day training exercise on building capacity in Household Survey Methods.  

The primary purpose of the training will be to complement and supplement material covered in an E-Learning course on Household Survey Methods, which would have been completed by staff of OECS Statistics offices ahead of the workshop. 

This activity, part of an ongoing World Bank supported Technical Assistance project, has the medium term objectives of:

1. Enabling OECS countries to produce a harmonized regional household survey, representative at the national level, at regular intervals, in accordance with international best quality standards; and

B.   Promoting analysis of poverty and inequality based on the resulting data, at regular intervals that are relevant to policy formulation and that reflect strong country ownership. 

Sean Curtis Mathurin at the OECS Secretariats says over twenty-five (25) participants will receive additional training on the different phases of the organization and implementation of multi-topic household surveys: “This training activity is the first in a series planned to culminate in a harmonised approach to the regular collection, documentation and dissemination of household survey data in OECS Member States.” 

Mathurin projects that the training and follow up sessions will enhance the institutional capacity of National Statistical Offices in OECS countries to conduct household surveys and to produce indicators on the evolution of poverty and inequality in the OECS region. 

The initiative will also be targeted at enhancing the capacity of other government agencies in OECS countries to produce Poverty Assessments or similar analytical products. 

The OECS training workshop on Household Survey Methods is being supported with a grant funding from the World Bank Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building and UNICEF.

(OECS Secretariat, Wednesday October 12^th 2011, Castries Saint Lucia)  Caribbean Statistics Day will be celebrated across the region on Friday 14^th October 2010,  recognizing the essential role of Statistics in the development of the Caribbean Community .

OECS Secretariat, Castries, St. Lucia, Thursday September 29^th  2011. The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Secretariat will from 4^th – 6^th October 2011 convene a meeting of OECS Directors of Statistics in St. Lucia to discuss OECS Statistical Developments in the context of the OECS Economic Union.

(Friday September 16, 2011 OECS Secretariat CastriesSt. Lucia) The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Secretariat, in collaboration with the Sub-regional Office for the Caribbean of the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), will from 19^th – 23^rd September, 2011 convene a training exercise in Computer Editing of Population and Housing Census Data in Antigua and Barbuda.

The training activity, requested by OECS Member States, comes on the heels of the recently signed OECS/UNFPA Memorandum of Understanding, which recognises specific linkages between the mandates of the respective organisations and is designed to further strengthen those ties through collaboration on population programmes, including demographic data collection and analysis, reproductive health and gender. Sean Curtis Mathurin of the OECS Secretariat says: “The workshop is intended to provide participants with a better understanding of the census databases expected to be developed by OECS countries in 2011/2012, assist with addressing data processing challenges, and contribute to developing a plan for the way forward in this area.”

This workshop complements an earlier training activity held in November 2010, by building further on the skills and knowledge of OECS statisticians in data editing techniques and procedures. OECS countries were expected to work over the past year on their preliminary data editing manuals and programs and should now have questions and queries based on their application. Mathurin says the workshop will also incorporate tabulation procedures and techniques, with a view to catering to specific tabulation needs of participating countries. CSPro Software and its applications will be used as the database processing package: “The workshop is expected to contribute to the successful processing of census data in preparation for its tabulation, which is a vital step in the successful implementation of the OECS Population and Housing Censuses in 2011, and the production of comparable data useful for policy and decision making, as the OECS Member States continue the implementation of Economic Union.”