ORANE
DOUGLAS ORANE, the chairman of the Diaspora Conference organising committee, said this year's event is expected to be bigger and better than its first staging.
The second Jamaican Diaspora Conference, which is being held under the same theme as the first, 'Unleashing the Potential', will be held at the Jamaica Conference Centre, downtown Kingston, from June 15 - 16.
Speaking at a JIS Think Tank, Mr. Orane said that, whereas the inaugural forum involved 250 participants representing several Jamaican organisations and communities in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, this year's conference would see 500 representatives coming not only from these three countries, but also from Central America, Africa and the Caribbean.
BREAKDOWN OF PARTICIPANTS
Providing a breakdown of the participants for the conference, State Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Delano Franklyn, said 150 delegates are expected from the United States, 100 from the United Kingdom, 100 from Canada and 50 from the Caribbean, Africa and Central America combined.
The decision to broaden the network of delegates for the conference was deliberate, said Senator Franklyn, as the Government of Jamaica recognised that "in order to organise the Jamaican community overseas, we need to do it in a very systematic and incremental fashion, and, therefore, we build slowly."
