Vision 2021 is a part of a larger vision which the Codrington Trust and Codrington College are together unfolding. Vision 2021 is intended to first of all reconnect the Alumni to the College, for they can be found in almost every corner of the world and in almost every occupation and secondly to provide an endowment for the College to explore new avenues of training and research. One of the areas that we are constantly being challenged about is that of the lack Caribbean Theology, what is unique about the way in which we as Caribbean people understand God and ourselves in the context of our response to God and the way in which these shape our worldview.
Vision 2021 – invites Alumni and friends to pledge an amount to be donated to the College annually over the next four (4) years. 2026 marks 280 years of existence. When we do the maths we recognise that it all began in 1745. This is significant because not only does it mean it is the oldest seminary in the western world, but it also means that it was built by slave labour.
We, the descendants of slaves, must therefore be very aware of on whose labour we now go about our daily engagement. We do not have the luxury, as was recently demonstrated in other places in Europe where demonstrations were staged to rename and erase the memory of those who might have achieved their wealth through inhumane means, for us this is too limited a view. We must see the more, we must also see the sweat and the toil of our forebears and honour their memory. There is more that echoes from these walls than a desire of one man to see the College survive, even with the provisor that there should always be kept 300 slaves on the plantation. There is the life blood of those and many other slaves which lives on in these walls.
Hence, in memory of the requirement of 300 slaves, we invite persons to make an annual contribution of $300.00 or multiples thereof. Sir Christopher Codrington gave out of his abundance to this college but, our forebears out of their poverty, gave everything they had; they gave their lives.
The Pledge Card has images of the bust of Sir Christopher Codrington with the College inserted, for it was within him that it was birthed, but there are also images of ebony graced seminarians journeying to the college to become what their forebears could not, and so the legacy lives on. Their faces are not shown because ours is a timeless flow of men and women venturing down the drive to encounter that which has for centuries been contained in these hallowed walls. So this is the house of Codrington – the master and the slave. Floret Domus Codringtoniensis