Caribbean Resilience and the Power of Partnerships

On a September morning 20 years ago, the sun rose to a landscape of Grenada forever changed. I had spent the night huddling on top of the toilet in the kitchen half bath, thankful for its extra concrete roof which I had never appreciated, avoiding the inches of water below and listening to the destruction of the rest of my home. Hurricane Ivan had pummeled my homeland overnight, leaving utter devastation in its wake. Houses were roofless, trees stripped bare and lives upended. Yet amid the rubble and shock, I remember the feeling of unity as we all walked for miles in shock through downed power lines, trees and pieces of homes and buildings to check on strangers and loved ones. In the days and weeks that followed, I witnessed the amazing resilience of the Grenadian people—and an outpouring of support from our Caribbean family as help poured in from nearby islands and the wider world. Most recently, the story repeated itself in Carriacou and the Grenadines with Hurricane Beryl. It is a story that I have seen too many times in our region, the power of nature devastating the landscape, yet harnessing the resilience and the power of the people. These experiences highlight a simple Caribbean truth: our resilience is rooted in solidarity.

Hurricane Irma

forced complete evacuation of Barbuda—the first time in 300 years the island was uninhabited.

Caribbean Resilience

Living in the Caribbean means living with the certainty of uncertainty. Over the past 15 years, our region has been tested by some of the most destructive natural disasters in our history. In 2017, Hurricane Irma’s Category 5 185-mph winds flattened Barbuda, damaging 90% of structures and forcing the entire population to evacuate to Antigua—the first time in 300 years no one was left on Barbuda. That same brutal season, just after sending produce to neighbors affected by Irma, Dominica was hit by Hurricane Maria, which turned the “Nature Isle” into a scene of ruin. The second Category 5 hurricane for the season damaged or destroyed roughly 90% of the island’s homes and agriculture and tourism (the lifeblood of the economy) were virtually wiped out​. In April 2021, People in St. Vincent had to flee their homes when La Soufrière erupted, blasting ash 33,000 feet into the sky. The ash obscured the sun and caused significant challenges in neighbouring Barbados. Caribbean neighbors including Antigua and Guyana immediately offered help—shipping emergency supplies and opening their borders to thousands of evacuees.

La Soufrière’s

2021 eruption sent ash 33,000 feet into the sky, affecting neighboring Barbados

The true test of resilience is in our spirit—not only in how we rebuild and recover but also how we innovate and transform. After Maria, Dominica’s leaders vowed to become the world’s first climate-resilient nation. The Climate Resilience Act gave rise to the Climate Resilience and Recovery plan which includes the transformational target to become carbon neutral through 100% domestic renewable energy production and an increase of protected forest areas to 67% of Dominica’s land mass. Dominica seized the chance to rewrite its building codes and has constructed thousands of new homes built to endure Category 5 hurricanes. 

Yet, if stronger buildings and updated policies are the hardware of transformation, partnerships are the software that makes it all run. Repeatedly, I have seen that our ability to turn a disaster into an opportunity for growth hinges on partnerships we grow and nurture, and some of the deepest roots are those we forge in crisis.

The Power of Unexpected Partnerships

One of the most beautiful aspects of Caribbean resilience is that help often comes from unlikely places. Yes, governments and big institutions play a crucial role, but many impactful partnerships sprout organically, born of necessity, compassion, and trust.

This was demonstrated in Dominica after Hurricane Maria. Nine months after the storm, in a collaborative initiative led by humanitarian groups, skilled carpenters from across the Caribbean—from Trinidad, Guyana, Jamaica, and beyond—had traveled to Dominica to train local crews in hurricane-resilient construction techniques. This effort was spearheaded by a partnership between Habitat for Humanity and the International Organization for Migration, which had the ingenious idea to “import” builders from sister islands to accelerate roof repairs. In Dominica’s tight-knit communities, these visiting carpenters worked side by side with residents to literally raise roofs together. They not only rebuilt homes stronger than before, but forged bonds of brotherhood through the shared sweat of recovery. It was a reminder that sometimes our saviors don’t come in branded uniforms or large cargo planes—they come as fellow Caribbean citizens with toolkits and open hearts.

We’ve seen similar partnerships bloom in other crises. After Barbuda was rendered a ghost town by Irma, Antiguan families extended an open hand by sheltering Barbudans for months, treating them as family rather than refugees. Following the St. Vincent volcanic eruption, ordinary people across the islands organized donation drives, churches became makeshift relief centers, and WhatsApp groups buzzed with offers of spare rooms for displaced strangers. Regional organizations like the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) coordinate the official response, but it’s often these grassroots and community partnerships that fill the human gaps—the grandmother in Saint Lucia cooking hot meals for evacuees, or the group of nurses from Barbados who used their vacation time to volunteer in a post-eruption clinic.

In the hour of need, people come from near and far to meet the need and rise to the challenge. We have too many examples. Who can forget how the world rallied for Haiti after the 2010 quake, or for the Bahamas after Dorian in 2019? 

No single island, no single organization, can go it alone.

What these experiences cement for me is that crises are fertile ground to sow the seeds of transformational partnerships. When we link arms—as countries, communities or even individuals—our capacity to survive and thrive grows exponentially. No single island, no single organization, can go it alone. But together, we form a network of support that is stronger than the fiercest storm.

A Career Built on Collaboration

This philosophy of partnership has not only been the cornerstone of our region’s disaster recovery—it has shaped my own journey as a public health physician and health systems leader. I am a proud dual citizen of Grenada and Trinidad & Tobago, and my career path has straddled these and other Caribbean nations. At every step, I have sought out collaboration as the key to progress.

In Grenada, where I once served as Chief Medical Officer​, I learned quickly that improving health outcomes meant earning trust beyond the walls of the Ministry of Health. I recall the surprise of the Chief Veterinary Officer at the time when I crossed the hall to enter his office and Ministry simply to connect. He noted I had been the first to do so without an ongoing public health crisis. Partnerships, big or small, were the lifeblood of our public health response.

Later, as Medical Director of St. Jude Hospital in St. Lucia, I walked into a situation born of crisis and sustained by collaboration. A devastating fire in 2009 had destroyed much of the hospital, forcing staff and patients into a hospital set up in a sports stadium. When I assumed leadership in 2014, our “temporary” home was still a stadium—an unacceptable situation that somehow the staff had heroically transformed into a working hospital. How did St. Jude endure all those years? The answer lay in the spirit of partnership. Our doctors and nurses formed a tight family, improvising together to overcome challenges. Prior to and after the fire, several relationships with academic and clinical institutions in other countries ensured continuous learning and allowed for exposure of the staff as well as allowed for a diversity of visiting specialists. When the PAHO/WHO Representation of the Eastern Caribbean toured the hospital with me during a visit, he was amazed at the transformation of the stadium, and insisted this case needed to be written and shared. Leading in St. Jude taught me that when systems fail, people and partnerships rise to fill the void. That hospital’s story is one of transformation—not only in physical infrastructure, but in the strengthening of bonds and skills that will long outlast the building.

In my role heading in the Health Unit and in the Human and Social Division at the OECS Commission the power of partnerships surrounded me. The OECS (Organization of Eastern Caribbean States) itself is a testament to the power of partnership—a family of island nations with shared currency, diverse yet complementary cultures and a common destiny. The Pooled Procurement Service, for example, began in the 1980s primarily as a way for small nations of the countries of the OECS to purchase medicines and health supplies, securing lower prices and a more reliable supply than any one island could alone​. This collective strategy has been a quiet triumph of regional cooperation and has been expanded to include the procurement of items needed to prepare for and respond to disasters. The model only works because of trust and shared commitment among nations.

In the past few years, I’ve been especially inspired by how partnerships have driven our COVID-19 response. When the pandemic hit, the Caribbean did not have the luxury of waiting on the sidelines. Within the OECS, we convened regular strategy calls between Ministers of Health, shared scarce testing equipment between islands, and stood up the joint procurement of PPE and vaccines. We collaborated with regional international allies including the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), and the Pan American Health Organization. And beyond the government level, private sector and civil society partners—from hotel owners offering rooms for quarantine, to community leaders combating vaccine misinformation—were integral in holding our societies together. The pandemic underscored that our health security is only as strong as our weakest link. The only real solution was, and is, a united front.

Throughout my journey, I’ve held onto a personal mission statement: Collaborating to develop the best people, practices and technologies to address the social and environmental determinants of health, with emphasis on access to quality healthcare. These words guide me daily and reflect what I’ve lived and learned. In my current role as Assistant Dean of Community Medicine and Global Health at Ross University School of Medicine, mentoring aspiring doctors, I share the message that any lasting impact I have made in my career was through true collaboration. In each of these roles, partnerships have shaped not only projects and policies, but also me as a leader. They’ve taught me humility—that no one has all the answers—and the joy of celebrating shared victories that I could never have achieved alone.

Rallying Action: Our Future Through Connection

Looking back, the common thread through every hurricane, every eruption, every health crisis—and every success story in between—has been our capacity to connect and the power of these partnerships to transform. It is the creation of a network of health centers to ensure community access following hurricane David in Dominica. It is the embracing of French Territories into the OECS crossing the invisible borders of language and logistics left by a colonial past, it is the ability of patients to have medicines delivered and to consult with their doctors online following the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s the way we as Caribbean people rally, innovate, and transform our realities, time and again, through storms of both the literal and figurative kind.

Resilience, in the end, is not a solitary act. It is a symphony of human relationships. And the music of that symphony transforms the heart and soul of our region. I have seen that passion to change the future in the eyes of a young health worker from one country embracing a survivor from another, both understanding that they are part of something larger—a Caribbean family bound by more than geography, bound by a shared destiny.

Resilience, in the end, is not a solitary act. It is a symphony of human relationships.

As we build the future, we Caribbean leaders and citizens alike must recognize that investing in our connections is as important as investing in concrete and steel. Yes, we need hardened infrastructure, climate financing, and fit-for-purpose health facilities. But we equally need the soft infrastructure of trust—the kind that is built only by working, struggling, and triumphing together. This means creating more platforms for cooperation, empowering community groups, and nurturing the regional institutions that unite us. It means valuing our partnerships with the same seriousness as we do our budgets and plans.

Our ability to transform adversity into opportunity will depend on how well we continue to leverage the strength of togetherness.