We are very excited to hear about this new program and the increased access to reliable high-speed internet for residents in the territory. We hope this also means a stronger USVI economy! As reported by the VI Consortium recently, the U.S. Virgin Islands is set to receive a grant of $1,249,952.00 from the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) as part of the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program as part of the Biden administration’s “Internet for All” strategy.
In addition to this grant, NTIA recently announced an allocation of $150,000 in Digital Equity planning grant funding for the USVI. This federal funding brings USVI’s total to nearly $1.4 million, granted through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to facilitate the development and implementation of affordable, equitable, and reliable high-speed Internet services across the territory. The BEAD grant would enable the territory to extend affordable broadband access to even the most remote parts of the islands, ensuring all Virgin Islanders can benefit from the digital economy.
Congratulations to the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI)! Forbes Magazine recently praised the UVI for offering one of the best online learning models among Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the United States. The UVI online degree program was recognized among ten distinguished HBCUs for its low student-to-faculty ratio, relatively high student retention rate, and low average net price per year. The rankings appear in a June 6 article in Forbes Magazine. Forbes said UVI was chosen for creating a system that worked well as a classroom setting where all users engaged in the same activity, and for having interactive features through chat exchanges and message delivery.
UVI began offering online degree programs for graduate and undergraduate students in 2018. Leadership at UVI said they were exploring online courses at the time the hurricanes hit, and were able to utilize the infrastructure that had already been developed to bring university-level courses to the school virtually.
Read the full article on St. Croix Source here and the UVI press release here.
We are excited to see that tourism in the US Virgin Islands has remained very strong! The Caribbean Journal reported that ForwardKeys data shows the US Virgin Islands leading Caribbean destinations in international arrival growth, with a 22 percent increase over the first quarter of 2022. That’s ahead of destinations like St Maaten, Guadeloupe, Turks and Caicos and even the Dominican Republic. It also reported that since 2019, the numbers show an even more robust, sustainable jump: the US Virgin Islands has grown at a rate of 24 percent, the highest growth rate in the Caribbean. Read the full article here.
We have noticed that since beginning of the year, the island continues saw many many are visiting for the first time through the increase of cruise ship arrivals and stayover visitors from the mainland. It doesn’t surprise us that reports show in St. Croix, cruise traffic has increased by 150 percent! While the cruise ship season has ended here on St. Croix now that we are approaching June, our island arrivals by air are at an all-time high with visitors from all over the mainland coming to our shores for a taste of the island’s captivating energy.
We are so happy to also see the U.S. Virgin Islands has received top honors from several prestigious media companies for 2023. Porthole Cruise and Travel Magazine, Yahoo! Life and Frommers all underscored the territory for its ease of travel and new developments. Condé Nast Traveler highlighted the USVI as one of the Best Places to Go in 2023; Travel + Leisure ranked USVI as one of the 50 best destinations to travel to thanks to our beach vibes. We’re thrilled to share St. Croix with new and returning visitors in 2023.
The Virgin Islands Energy Office (VIEO) broke ground on the construction of a 125 kW Solar plus 300 kWh battery micro-grid at the St. Croix Educational Complex last month and slated to complete at the end of August. According to the St. Croix Source, the micro-grid will enable the Educational Complex’s emergency hurricane shelter to function reliably during extended grid outages and significantly reduce the use of fossil fuel generators that have proven difficult to maintain and costly to fuel. Additionally, under blue-sky conditions, the solar microgrid will aid in offsetting approximately $6,000 per month in utility costs the school incurs under normal operation.
This is great news for the territory and in very timely for the upcoming hurricane season and start of school year!
We talked to a young friend from the states visiting family on St. Croix. He showed us this quarter. The night before he had gone with his family on the bioluminescence tour in the Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve and described his delight in the tour seeing the mangrove forests in person! He knew a lot about the mangroves and why they are important to the wildlife. It was wonderful to hear! Now he has his own connection to that amazing habitat through his coin.
Mangroves are very important to wildlife and marine life. According to the National Park Service, magnificent mangroves are flowering trees that live in saltwater or brackish water in mudflats near shorelines. Red Mangroves are the most distinctive, with their complex ariel prop roots. These root systems, when submerged, support a diverse community of sponges, ascidians, algae, corals and crabs.
If you thinking about taking a bioluminescence tour on St. Croix, we recommend you taking a look at Go To St. Croix’s article. It highlights two of the Caribbean’s rare bioluminescent bays at Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve and Altona Lagoon.
Great news for first-time homebuyers who are looking to make homeownership a reality! V.I. Housing Finance Authority (VIHFA) announced the launch of the ‘Own A Lot, Build a Home’ program, a secondary financing initiative providing 20-year, zero-percent forgivable grants up to $250,000 for the construction of new single-family homes, as reported by the St. Croix Source. The program targets low-to-moderate-income eligible residents who own land, but also need financial assistance to develop it. Financing assistance will hopefully make home construction affordable for residents. The VIHFA has partnered with Banco Popular for the program. Read more about the requirements and the application on the VIHFA website. Read the full article here.
