The National Research and Development Foundation is a private non-governmental organization in Saint Lucia, organized in 1983. The Foundation emerged from the Caribbean Research Center, which similarly promoted research and development in Saint Lucia.
The NRDF presently offers a host of learning programmes aimed at improving the standard of education in Saint Lucia. The available courses include Masters Degrees, Bachelors Degrees, Advanced Diplomas, as well as a host of vocational courses for young people who may not have completed their secondary school education.
Vision
Our reason for pursuing this is to tap into a niche market, secondary school leavers and offer accelerated day time ABE classes. This strategy would enable us to attract a different set of facilitators i.e. retired business practitioners and retired members of the Business Division of Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (our lone state owned tertiary level institution).
In the same manner that we successfully instituted and got the Saint Lucian market to embrace and accept weekend classes, the NRDF is eager to use the ABE class offerings to secondary school leavers as the catalyst to introducing this method for academic programmes as well, as has been successfully done in Trinidad. A view of the Foundation’s Vision and Mission statements will show how this strategy will tie in well with the training aspects of our operations.
Vision Statement
The OECS‘s premier Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) financier, Business Development, Research and Professional Training Institute.
The NRDF’s Vision looks beyond the physical boundaries of Saint Lucia and embraces the single economic space created through the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Single Market, which is expected to deepen the economic (and in particular; the business relationships) linkages between the OECS member states. NRDF trainees should and would be able to transfer their skills within the OECS and indeed with the wider Caribbean Community (CARICOM) region. Similarly where the opportunities are presented business clients can be drawn Within the wider OECS market to harness greater economies of scale and improve financial profitability and sustainability.
Mission Statement
To consistently provide stakeholders with competitive financing, market intelligence relevant training and quality services in an accommodating business environment while maintaining efficiency and visibility.
