By Dr Schontal Moore, Adviser: VUSSC, COL

“I hope to learn a lot more about what robotics is like in other Caribbean countries. To be in groups with so many different people and perspectives is exciting to me.” 

These words from Myah Taylor-Marshall, a 21-year-old student at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, captured the spirit in the virtual room as young people gathered in late August for the opening of the Robotics Design and Prototype phase of the Youth Robotics for Blue-Green Resilience and Prosperity Project. 

The Youth Robotics for Blue-Green Resilience and Prosperity Project is a Commonwealth of Learning pilot in the Caribbean that brings young people together from across the region to explore real development challenges and consider how technology, research, communication and advocacy can contribute to practical solutions. Through regional collaboration and hands-on learning, the initiative is designed to strengthen future-ready skills while giving Caribbean youth an active role in imagining and shaping a more resilient and prosperous future. 

The project is being delivered through two complementary youth streams. The first brings young people together in Robotics Design and Prototype Teams to research shared Caribbean challenges and develop possible robotics-enabled solutions. The second, a Research, Media and Advocacy Team, gives young people a platform to investigate many of the same blue-green resilience issues and communicate their perspectives through research, digital storytelling and advocacy. Together, the streams connect technical innovation with the research, communication, and youth advocacy needed to build broader public understanding and support for solutions. 

Positioning youth as more than students, the initiative aims to empower them as researchers, designers, builders, coders, communicators and advocates who can shape solutions to the real-world challenges directly affecting them. From climate resilience, food security and water quality to waste management, coastal monitoring, disaster preparedness, agriculture, and inclusion, participants are now working together to explore how robotics can contribute to a more sustainable and resilient future. 

Designing solutions across borders 

The Robotics Design and Prototype stream consists of 49 young people aged 16 to 23 who will develop potential responses to challenges that may include sensor-based monitoring, automated or semi-automated devices, tools for agriculture and environmental management, and technologies that can support communities in difficult or hazardous conditions.  

As participants met for the first time, shared their strengths and discussed their goals, they were organised into seven Robotics Design and Prototype Teams.  Resident mentors are supporting the teams, including Tijay Myers in Antigua and Barbuda; Daniel Devonish and Paul Nicholls in Barbados; Jamie Usher and Denesha Grant in Belize; Marc Anthony Eaton and Krystan Hunter in Jamaica; and Jorrel Bisnath in Trinidad and Tobago. Council Members Stacey Payne Mascall, Shawn Hoyte, Diandra Sukhu and Owen Wilson are helping to coordinate the initiative’s technical and research streams, providing strategic support across the project, and Dr Schontal Moore, Adviser: VUSSC, COL, is providing overall guidance to the initiative, helping to connect the youth innovation process with COL’s wider work in small states, skills development and regional collaboration.  

With the support of their mentors, each team is now working to identify an urgent development challenge, investigate why it matters, design a robotics-enabled response, prepare a materials plan, and build or simulate a prototype. While mentors will guide the process, the youth will retain ownership of the ideas, decision-making and work. 

Teams will meet virtually, and physical prototypes will be developed in the countries where their mentors are based. This blended model reflects the realities of Commonwealth Small States, where geography can create constraints but also foster resourcefulness, strong communication and shared problem-solving. In that sense, integration itself becomes part of the solution: young people separated by geography are learning to work as one regional community of problem-solvers, combining different perspectives and capabilities around a shared purpose. A researcher in one country may help define the problem, a coder on another island may contribute to the programming, a designer elsewhere may shape the prototype, and another participant may document the decisions, setbacks and breakthroughs that make up the project story. 

The initiative will also give selected participants an opportunity to present their projects and prototypes to Commonwealth leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda this November. At this stage, the goal is not to provide the answers, but to help each team understand the problem and develop a solution one step at a time. Ideas may change, designs may fail and assumptions may need to be revisited. That process of testing, learning and improving is central to the experience. 

Turning ideas into influence  

The project has deliberately taken a STEAM rather than STEM approach, recognising that effective solutions require more than technical knowledge. While science, technology, engineering and mathematics can form the foundations for understanding problems and designing and testing solutions, the arts in STEAM bring creativity, human-centred design, communication and storytelling, enabling participants not only to build something that works, but also to explain why it matters and who it can benefit. 

Alongside the Robotics Design and Prototype stream, the project’s research, media, and advocacy team extends this approach beyond the technical design process. With more than 60 young people as members, the team is investigating many of these same blue-green resilience challenges and helping tell the wider Caribbean story through research, digital storytelling, social media, and a series of youth-led webinars.  

Their work will culminate in advocacy articles compiled into a special-edition youth research journal, to be launched at CHOGM 2026 as a legacy publication showcasing Caribbean youth perspectives, evidence and calls for action. 

Equipping teachers for the next generation  

The pilot is also looking beyond the young people currently in the programme by investing in the teachers who influence their learning. Through the end of the year, a group of teachers from across the Caribbean will participate in a 12-week blended Beginner Robotics Micro-Credential Course. With access to learning resources and synchronous virtual sessions, the course is designed to introduce teachers to robotics, build their confidence with core robotics and coding concepts, and strengthen their ability to use robotics meaningfully in teaching and learning. 

By integrating robotics into teaching, educators can strengthen learners’ problem-solving and technical skills, encourage earlier interest in STEAM, and help students see clearer pathways into further study, careers, innovation and entrepreneurship. 

This project began with robotics, but its larger purpose is human. It is about giving young people a challenge worthy of their abilities, giving teachers the capacity to nurture the next generation, and creating a platform where youth voices can be heard. It is also about demonstrating that regional integration can be lived, not only discussed, when Caribbean youth work across borders and blue waters around a shared challenge, a shared vision and a shared commitment to creating something useful for their communities. 

Caribbean youth are not waiting for the future to arrive. They are learning how to design it, build it, test it and speak for it.