Indo-Caribbean centre celebrates 200th weekly webinars

The Indo-Caribbean Cultural Centre (ICC) marked its 200th weekly Zoom public meetings on March 24.

For the past three years and ten months, the organisation hosted 844 presenters from across of the world speaking on 200 topics as part of an on-going Pan Indo-Caribbean, and Pan Indian-Diaspora Global project, a media release said.

The Ameena Gafoor Institute (AGI) – directed by Prof David Dabydeen – and the Pluto Educational Trust (PET) have joined the ICC in hosting some of these programmes that deal with indentureship and its legacies. The ICC has also partnered with the Networking for World Awareness of Multicultural Integration (NWAMI) and the Centre for Commonwealth Research (CCR), both led by Dr Sibani Roy.

The topics of the meetings focus mainly on Indians, but the forum is not for Indians only, the release said.

The forum was created by anthropologist Dr Kumar Mahabir, and is co-directed by Shalima Mohammed, on the premise that Indians in the diaspora are often marginal, or marginalised, in the mainstream media, in formal discourses, and in public groups, organisations and institutions, the release said.

"This platform gives voice and visibility to this minority ethnic group in the region. Our agenda is similar to that of the Black Lives Matter movement with the objective to eradicate inequality, injustice, institutional discrimination and systemic racism.

"The mission is to bring the Indian diaspora in the Caribbean and elsewhere closer for the purpose of intellectual discussions, unity, solidarity and empowerment every Sunday on one platform," the release said.

"The vision is to achieve a better understanding and appreciation of ourselves in seeking to create a diverse, just, equitable and non-discriminatory society in which Indo-Caribbeans and others thrive harmoniously with other ethnic groups," Mahabir said in the release.

The webinars are live streamed, recorded and archived on the ICC's YouTube channel.

The release said almost all of them have been uploaded to the ICC’s website and the Facebook page.