Youth empowerment key to community survival

– Caricom heads told

“Empower us now for the survival of the community,” Dominica’s Monelle Alexis, Dean of the Caricom Youth Ambassador Corps told Caribbean Community leaders at the Special Summit of Heads of Government on Youth Develop-ment.

Monelle Alexis

According to a Caricom press release, Alexis bewailed the absence of several Heads at the summit noting that they had failed to grasp the symbolic significance of the moment, considering that this year has been designated International Year of the Youth. Moreover, the summit had been convened to receive the report of two-and-half-years of qualitative research conducted by the 15-member Caricom Commission on Youth Development. She said the moment “was further lost in a cruel situational irony that those who purported to be gravely concerned about the future of youth and had mandated the commission to conduct the research, did not find the time to attend and receive the report.”

Nevertheless Alexis noted that youth would continue to contribute to the development process and pleaded for the voice of youth in community development and at the national level to be stronger. In keeping with the theme of the summit, ‘Youth now for the Community tomorrow’ Alexis declared that the old paradigm of “youth are leaders of tomorrow” must give way to a new kind of philosophy that “youth are creative and valuable asset; not a problem to be solved.

“We want to participate now; we have demonstrated repeatedly that we can contribute now; if the future of the community rests squarely on our shoulders as the mandate of Heads of Govt had implied, then our dress rehearsals begin now,” she said.

Alexis urged the Heads to consider whether those decisions they have made about youth without youth involvement have worked and whether the millions of dollars spent on youth-related interventions have worked. “Consider that they might not have worked because you did not involve us,” she added.

Alexis then highlighted Suriname’s Youth Governance structure as a best practice in youth participation that could be benchmarked by the rest of the Caribbean. “Charge us,” she declared, “and we guarantee you, you will reap returns on your investments.”

Following her speech, which was greeted with thunderous applause, Alexis led her peers in nine minutes of silence as a demonstration of their displeasure with those Heads who did not attend the meeting. The nine minutes, she said, represented the nine million youth across the region.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Conference, Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, cautioned the youth to be reasoned and responsible in their calls for greater participation, pointing out that millions had already been invested in youth development.