Young people, the new generation now coming of adult age, feel they must take responsibility for the state of the society, and launch citizen initiatives to solve crushing problems.
Faced with a society where citizens feel the pain of grotesque failures in the crucial public education system, Elson Browne-Low, 21, wants to make a difference for the 65 percent of young Guyanese who fail Math and English every year. Studying Political Science and Economics at Amherst College in the US, 
he took the summer break to come back home to help educate failing kids.
In the face of gross failure at the Ministry of Education, in its inability to lift the national average pass rate in Math and English for school-leavers from a dismal 35 percent, Browne-Low gathered a group of young citizens to circumvent the failing system, and launch their own citizen solution.
Government fails to initiate workable literacy solutions that produce good results, with national literacy caught in a critical crisis that cries out in deep desperation for visionary, innovative solutions. Browne-Low and his band of young citizens aim to “change the lives of these kids, who would otherwise suffer as victims of the system”.
Along with Robo Matheson, Browne-Low launched a humble effort they named The Benab Foundation, with big, visionary goals.
Both graduates of Queen’s College, they benefitted from a quirk of the national education system: Browne-Low said the national average pass rate of 35 percent reveals a shocking state of affairs. “The few top schools see a pass rate of over 90 percent in Math and English. So for the national average to be 35 percent, we can see that the failure rate in the rest of the system is really high, to drag down the national average from 90 at the top schools to a mere 35. It’s not good. We think we can contribute some kind of solution,” he said.
So Browne-Low networked with his fellow students at the top schools, gathering young graduates who passed Math and English with distinction. He proposed they come together under the umbrella of The Benab Foundation to spend their summer vacation tutoring young Second and Third Formers from poor-functioning schools.
They launched their citizen initiative this summer, with pilot projects at Dolphin Secondary School in Charlestown and at Campbellville Secondary School.
Last week Monday, 20 students gathered in their school uniform at Dolphin Secondary, in a classroom, where volunteer teachers taught them Math and Creative Writing. Marissa Gangadin, Victor Asim, Shaunee Thompson and Browne-Low taught the young kids with zeal, gentle care and keen concern.
The kids responded with enthusiasm and interest. If this effort bears fruit and becomes a national success story, Browne-Low’s initiative would make an astonishing difference.
“Even the couple months teaching these kids would be enough to completely change their lives, to give them a chance at a good future,” Browne-Low said.
This citizen initiative, from students who graduated from Queen’s College, shows the value of educating our young people to become thinkers and leaders, an urgency lacking at the Ministry of Education. For example, while Browne-Low and his young volunteer teachers taught at Dolphin Secondary last Monday, carpenters just outside the door proceeded to power up their construction tools, oblivious to the noise affecting the classroom.
The Ministry of Education, which spent one billion US dollars over two decades on the national public education system, producing results of 35 percent Math and English pass rates, spends the summer working on the Dolphin school building, while Browne-Low talks of the critical need for teaching the students Math and English.
While young citizens see the problem and come up with workable initiatives, the Ministry insists on banging away at construction. Browne-Low and the other volunteer teachers stood silent, frustrated, as the carpenters banged outside, resuming their teaching at a break in the noise.
Browne-Low wants The Benab Foundation to develop into a national Guyanese think-tank of young people, where educated young citizens could gather and network and brainstorm, coming up with fresh new ideas to solve national problems.
“Like the comforting, all-embracing shelter of a benab, the foundation aims to provide space for the intellectual thought necessary for Guyana’s growth and development. This comes from a strong belief in the power of ideas as an essential component of national development,” Browne-Low said.
Marissa Gangadin, 18, graduated from Queen’s College, and aims to study law.
She’s spending her summer volunteering to teach students at Dolphin and Campbellville.
Committed to volunteering and making a difference, Gangadin said “I volunteer because I have a passion for service. I like the self-fulfillment of being able to impact someone’s life positively, empowering them and maybe changing their lives for the better. I am involved in Benab because of its mission, its aim and the things the organization wishes to accomplish.
We are working on getting things done, empowering lives and changing lives”. She got involved after Browne-Low and Matheson approached their QC colleagues with the idea.
Listening to these young people, hearing the passion and commitment of Shaunee Thompson, Gangadin and Browne-Low, as they volunteer to make a difference for kids failing Math and English, in the face of stunning Government failure in providing decent education to every Guyanese child, is supremely refreshing.
We see other such citizen initiatives, for example, in Youth For Guyana. These and Browne-Low’s Benab Foundation give us confidence that our emerging young people will initiate citizen solutions, ignoring the stunted political inertia that stifles us.
This 21-year-old Guyanese took his summer from his studies at a college in the US with the sole goal of making a difference in the lives of dozens of kids caught in our State education system, where there’s more chance of them failing, than passing, Math and English.
His effort stands in stark contrast to that of the Ministry of Education, funded with tens of billions of dollars in the national budget, yet failing in literacy and producing a mere 35 percent pass rate at Math and English for school leavers.
Hopefully, these young vision-makers would teach Government, and Parliament, the way forward.
