Following a preparatory process over several months, the eleven members of the Steering Committee responsible for overseeing the work of a slavery reconciliation fund for Barbados worth £7 million GBP ($9,152,500 USD or 18 million Barbados dollars) have been announced.
Last September (2023), United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG), an Anglican mission agency with past links to slavery in Barbados, partnered with the Codrington Trust, responsible for overseeing the Codrington estate on the island, in announcing the multi-million dollar fund at a convened press conference focussed on solutions to readdressing the historic iniquities of enslavement.
The fund is part of plans announced in a long term project entitled “Renewal & Reconciliation: The Codrington Reparations Project.”
“USPG is deeply ashamed of our past links to slavery,” said the Rev. Duncan Dormor, General Secretary of USPG, when the fund was announced. “We recognise that it is not simply enough to repent in thought and word, but we must take action, working in partnership with Codrington where the descendants of enslaved persons are still deeply impacted by the generational trauma that came from the Codrington Plantations.”
Engaging with descendants of slaves, they identified four areas of work: community development and engagement; historical research and education; burial places and memorialisation; and family research.
The fund, pledged by USPG responding to Codrington Trust proposals, are being spent on the islands over a 10 to 15-year period, supporting the four work areas.
USPG has previously acknowledged its “disgraceful links to the slave trade,” according to a press statement.
The Society of the Propagation of the Gospel, as USPG was formerly known, received a bequest from Sir Christopher Codrington for two plantations in Barbados in 1710. The organization subsequently financially benefited from the labor of slaves working on the Codrington Estate, during the period of 1710 to 1838.
According to USPG, the new project forms part of its ongoing commitment to “engaging critically with its shameful history.”
“It is our hope that, through this reparations project, there will be serious reckoning with the history of the relationship between The Codrington Trust and USPG, but also a process of renewal and reconciliation that will be healing of the pain of the past,” stated Archbishop Howard Gregory, Primate and Metropolitan of The Church of the Province in the West Indies.
The new Steering Committee is tasked with governing and overseeing operations for the renewal and reconciliation project. This guidance will be complemented by working with an Executive Committee and giving recommendations to two trustee boards. The two executive leads, Kevin Farmer for the Codrington Trust and Rev. Duncan Dormer for the USPG, will be accountable to these overseers.
Three independent members with international experience will join three representatives from each trustee body. These are Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles, a historian and Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Committee; D. Deborah L. Mack, Associate Director for Strategic Partnerships at the National African American Museum of History and Culture, Washington DC; and Dr Annalee Babb, digital impact specialist and Ambassador-designate of Barbados to the United Arab Emirates.
They will be joined by two local community representatives: Antonio Roberts, a member of the St. John community, and Rosanna Springer, a nurse and local resident of the Codrington Tenantry area.
“I am thrilled that this committee is comprised of people with a balance of experience, youth, and talent. They are well equipped to capture, create and implement the needs of the community for this project to ensure that it is successful and sustainable,” said Kevin Farmer, Executive Secretary at the Codrington Trust.
Codrington Trust representatives on the Steering Committee are led by the Most Rev. Gregory Howard, Archbishop of the Church of the Province of the West Indies and Bishop of Jamaica; government representative Marva Howell, Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Third Sector; and Canon Rev. Dr Michael Clarke, Principal of Codrington College.
USPG members include the Chair of Trustees, The Rt Rev. David Walker, Bishop of Manchester; former lawyer Peter Weinand and Canon Rev Carlton Turner, a Bahamian theologian.
“I am profoundly grateful to all the members of our steering committee for the gifts of their time, expertise and commitment to this project. I am especially grateful to our independent members Sir Hilary Beckles, Dr Annalee Babb and Dr Deborah Mack and look forward to their wisdom, insights and challenge as we embark on this important journey,” said Rev. Dormor.
