Press Releases 2005

U.S. Embassy Announces Prestigious Award to Ingrid Parchment

Kingston, May 5, 2005

The United States Embassy in Kingston is pleased to announce that Ms. Ingrid Parchment, Director of Field Operations at the Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation (CCAM), has been selected to participate in the International Visitor Program on Grassroots Democracy.  The U.S. State Department, through the International Visitor Program, enables up-and-coming leaders from all over the world to travel to the U.S. each year to meet and confer with their professional counterparts and to experience the U.S. and its institutions first-hand.
 
As a director of CCAM, Ms. Parchment is involved in the management of the Portland Bight, Jamaica's largest environmentally protected area. She is also an executive member of the community-based organization Clarendon Parish Development Committee, which works to give citizens a voice on the issues that affect them.
 
According to Ms. Parchment, "With my job and my personal commitment to the development of my parish, I have taken on the role of getting persons at the grassroots level to be a part of the decision making process as it is my belief that unless we collectively decide the way forward, we will go nowhere."
 
From May 5 - 26, 2005, Ms. Parchment and 22 other participants from around the world will travel to Washington, DC; Portland, Maine; Detroit, Michigan; Huntsville, Alabama; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Seattle, Washington, where they will meet congressional and state senators to discuss the relationship between elected representatives and citizens, as well as various grass roots level organizations.
 
Topics will include Grassroots Democracy and the Federal System, Youth Empowerment and Civic Education, Economic Development of Women, Immigrants and the Poor, Civil Society and the Local Democratic Process, Grassroots Efforts and the Environment and Public-Private Partnerships to Promote Change.