Barbados is set to compete at the WorldSkills Competition 2022 Special Edition (WSC2022SE)!, and the team will depart for Switzerland today.
This is the official replacement for WorldSkills Shanghai 2022 Competition which was cancelled in May because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As a result of the commitment of the WorldSkills International’s global partners and member countries, 61 skill competitions will be held over 12 weeks in 15 countries and regions between September 7 and November 26.
Barbados’ team to the WorldSkills Shanghai 2022, which comprised competitors Jessica Cummins (Cooking), Tonquanja Giddings (Restaurant Service) as well as coaches Chef Peter Edey (Cooking) and Roderick Prescod (Restaurant Service), both of whom will also serve as judges during the competition, will instead be heading to Lucerne, Switzerland to compete in the skill competitions for these two areas, during October 23 to 26.
They will be accompanied by team officials Henderson Eastmond (Official Delegate), Dario Walcott (Technical Delegate) and Sarah Gilkes-Daniel (Team Leader).
Cummins and Cummins were selected to represent Barbados after a long and intense process of training and continuous assessment. It commenced with their participation in the finals of the WorldSkills Barbados 2020 Competition, where they represented their training institution Barbados Community College (BCC). They both obtained gold medals in their respective skill areas with scores which made them eligible for selection to the WorldSkills Barbados Training Squad.
Following further training and continuous assessment throughout 2021 and 2022, as well as participation in a Competitors’ Developmental Programme aimed at developing their soft skills, both young women successfully maintained the scores necessary to make the Barbados team to the international WorldSkills Competition.
On May 31, 2022 WorldSkills announced the cancellation of the WorldSkills Shanghai 2022 as a result of the ongoing COVID situation at the time which made it impossible for host country China to stage the 46th edition of the competition.
The 46th WorldSkills Competition was originally planned for 2021 and was postponed in 2020 because of the pandemic to October 12–17, 2022. (BGIS)