CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington on Wednesday challenged the youth of the Community to look not merely for the benefits that may be coming to them but also to use their “energy, creativity and skill” to help in building the Community that they want.
Secretary General Carrington in an address at the opening of the Regional Youth Forum in Paramaribo, Suriname, noted that “the young people of today will surely be the main beneficiaries, not only of the CSME (CARICOM Single Market and Economy), but also of all the integration arrangements, as we seek to create a ‘Community For All’,” a news release from the CARICOM Secretariat at Turkeyen stated.
“It is vital therefore,” he added, “that you be among the main builders as well.”
He also warmly acknowledged the youth representatives from quake-ravaged Haiti.
He told the Haitian youth representatives “You are here because of your grim determination and perseverance. Those are qualities we hold dear in the Community. Those are the true values for the development of our youth.”
He then invited the audience at the forum to join in a minute’s silence “to those of our youth and others who lost their lives in the January 12 earthquake catastrophe in Haiti.”
Meanwhile, Carrington observed that it is fitting that “this historic week” should begin with the emphasis on the youth of the Community while setting the stage for the pivotal meeting of the ministers today and finally that of the Heads of Government tomorrow and the following day.
All of this could not have taken place at a more propitious and appropriate time than this year, the International Year of Youth, he observed.
The Secretary General also recalled that when the Twenty-Seventh Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM mandated the establishment of a Commission on Youth Development in July 2006, in St Kitts and Nevis, the leaders had tasked the Commission with undertaking “a full scale analysis of the challenges and opportunities for youth in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy; and with making recommendations to improve their well-being and empowerment.”
The Heads of Government did so, he added, against a background where young people under the age of 30 comprise 60 per cent of the Community’s population.
However, Carrington noted, the deliberations later this week would not be the first encounter between the Heads of Government and the youth of the Community.
And referring to the rejuvenation of the CARICOM Youth Ambassadors Corps which had been formed during the 20th Anniversary celebrations in 1993, he said that the Corps had become a virtual institution in its own right within the CARICOM system.
The CARICOM Youth Ambassadors, Carrington said further, have continued to play a vital role in several areas of Community life: especially in health, environment, information, education and communications.
This week, Carrington told the Youth Forum, “is about harnessing your ideas and winning the hearts and minds of the policy makers to make those ideas their ideas so that together we can plot a course that would benefit you – an integral part of our Community.”
The Report of the Commission is expected to help in bringing that vision to reality, the Secretary-General declared.
And expressing the greatest appreciation for the work of the Commissioners, he said it was evident from the comprehensive nature and the quality of the Report that it could very well be “one of the key documents in our Community’s 37-year history, for it may turn out to have provided the only sure path through which the CSME may eventually come to fruition.”
The forum was to analyse and debate the recommendations of that Report starting with the forum’s outcome document ‘On Optimising Youth Contribution to Development and Integration’ and ending with a ‘Declaration from the Heads of Government on the Future of Youth In The Caribbean Community’, the release stated.
Carrington also expressed the hope that the forum will keep in focus the themes of the Report as they begin the critical deliberations with an emphasis on an ‘Eye on the Future and on Investing in the YOUTH NOW for Tomorrow’s Community’.
