Anglican group launches L7m project in Barbados to atone for slavery atrocities

Source: The Guardian

Anglican group launches £7m project in Barbados to atone for slavery atrocities

Funds will help communities living on the Codrington estate, which was home to two sugar plantations

Natricia Duncan Caribbean correspondent
Fri 6 Sep 2024 19.17 BST
First published on Fri 6 Sep 2024 11.33 BST

An Anglican church group is to launch a £7m reconciliation project in Barbados to atone for the atrocities of transatlantic slavery and compensate descendants of enslaved people.

United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG), a UK-based missionary organisation created in 1701 to convert people in the colonies to Christianity, will work with local and regional partners in the Caribbean to allocate money to education and entrepreneurial grants and historical research. It will also support land ownership among descendants of enslaved people.

The project, which launches on Saturday, will focus on communities living on the Codrington estate in eastern Barbados. Once the site of two thriving sugar plantations, generating an estimated income of £5m a year in today’s money, the estate was owned by the planter Christopher Codrington. He bequeathed it to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG), which would later become USPG.

Codrington’s will stipulated he wanted 300 enslaved people to work on the plantation and the establishment of a theological college. Today, the college and the estate are managed by a government-established trust that is working with USPG on the project.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/06/anglican-church-mission-project-barbados-atone-slavery