The West Indian and Caribbean Experiences Project (WICEN)
Advancing Understanding and Opportunity
West Indian and Caribbean Experiences Network (WICEN) Studies explores how lived experiences shape multiple identities and how these experiences function as resources for individual and collective development. WICEN draws upon trusted, multifaceted lifestyle relationships grounded in histories of place, migration, language, quality-of-life conditions, mindsets, and other sociocultural manifestations to advance education, technical training, management, Research-to-Practice (R2P), and socioeconomic development initiatives within and beyond West Indian and Caribbean communities.
West Indies and Caribbean as Historical Gateways to the Americas
The names West Indies and Caribbean function as historical gateways to the Americas. Deeply rooted in the formation of international politics, these terms carry rich legacies shaped by centuries of socioeconomic and geopolitical transformation.
The term West Indies, for example, stands as a monument to the geographical fallacy associated with Christopher Columbus and other European explorers who believed the region represented a strategic westward route from Spain to India. The later adoption and broader use of the term Caribbean emerged, in part, in an effort to correct this geographic misunderstanding. Yet, for better or worse, the indelible political, cultural, and psychological consequences of these historical constructions continue to persist and evolve through subsequent forms of political and historical serendipity.
WICEN recognizes that West Indian and Caribbean experiences are deeply overlapping in many respects, while also representing distinct historical and cultural phenomena. These experiences carry different histories, enduring mental legacies, cultural meanings, challenges, and opportunities for the peoples whose lives, identities, and aspirations have been shaped by the region and its global connections.
WICEN therefore approaches the West Indian and Caribbean experience not as a singular or fixed identity, but as an evolving constellation of historical, cultural, political, and socioeconomic realities that continue to shape ways of being within and beyond the Americas.
The WICEN affirms and embraces the full range of overlapping complexities and distinct experiences that emanate from the region. The WICEN leverages multiple identities and wide-ranging experiences this region inspires to manage challenges and explore opportunities. When appropriate, Caribbean will be used to represent both the Caribbean and the West Indies as a single geographical region. In keeping with this multiple identity embrace, potential participants in, and beneficiaries of, the WICEN are dispersed throughout neighborhood communities worldwide. We hope you will find WICEN useful as a trusted space for engaging your local community in deep dialogues and trade-offs for living sustainably in a finite planet.
Repurpose Legacies of Mental Slavery into Trusted Community Engagements
While the WICEN aims to improve our understanding and manifestations of the Caribbean region’s history, WICEN’s focus is on the use of 21st century affordances to shape the region’s future in ways that empower, and inspire, small neighborhood groups of individuals to participate in place-based socioeconomic development that value participatory equity for the less powerful. The vision of WICEN is to serve as a common agency for stimulation, transformation, and guidance to local neighborhood groups. In this vision, where our technological ability to transcend distance affords unprecedented opportunities for deep dialogues, our aim is to leverage this ability to repurpose legacies of mental slavery into trusted shared interest communities of purposeful engagements. Our hope is that these trusted and purposeful engagements will promote Research to Practice Partnerships (RPP), and visions of transformations that are not just incremental but revolutionary.
PlexLearning Removes Barriers to Quality-of-Life Developments
The WICEN project uses PlexLearning technology infrastructure to promote life-long continuous learning. PlexLearning is a social construct for communication in digital societies. It helps remove barriers, fill gaps, and create bridges, between formal education, informal learning, career management, professional interests, property stewardship (intellectual and physical), content creation, food security, and entrepreneurship while protecting the planet for equitable academic, workforce, economic, and quality of life developments.
Micro-Businesses Success Rate Increase with Research to Practice Partnerships
The WICEN platform makes Research to Practice Partnerships (RPP) accessible to local small Shared Interest Community (SIC) groups. SIC micro-businesses success rate with RPPs are higher than if they were working separately. The WICEN platform enables SIC groups, in partnerships with private, academic, and government sectors, to engage with their local communities around, among others, neighborhood journalism, place-based career incubators, and capacity building services that nurtures and showcase cultural experiences, entrepreneurial, professional, and technological competencies of local neighborhood communities of motivated individuals.
Thriving-In-Place is as Important as Having Success at Scale.
As members of the WICEN, local SIC groups and micro-businesses have voices and the means to formally engage in shared governance and local neighborhood community participation through different media formats (print, blogs portals, radio, video, publications) and coalesce around maters they view as important. SIC micro-businesses groups are self-motivated by goals and issues that they view as important for them to thrive in-place (urban neighborhoods and rural communities). WICEN brings capacity to achieving development goals, resolve issues that are unique to each SIC local situations, and helps to make thriving in-place at least as important as having success at scale. WICEN presumes micro-businesses to be more than miniature corporations with unique functions, measurement of success, and infrastructure for sustainability.
Summary
In the internet century when distance is no longer a barrier to social engagement, rich continuous social dialogue, and sharing of ideas to make the world a better place, we believe everyone has stories worth sharing and ambitions of participating in shaping a brighter future. The WICEN are here help. Please contact us by completing this simple form.