A two-day working session on finalising a national policy on youth empowerment that opened yesterday also hopes to yield a strategic plan to improve the conditions of young people over the next five years.
By the time the session ends today, stakeholders who have been actively involved in youth development will have addressed such themes as Youth Identity, Employment, Inequity and Poverty, Social Development, Youth Participation and Representation and Youth Vulnerability, Safety and Well-being as they engage in the crafting of a new draft policy.
The session was convened at the Arthur Chung International Convention Centre by the government through the Ministry of Education, in collaboration with UNICEF and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). It brought together representatives from various youth-led and youth-centred organisations in Guyana, such as the Guyana National Youth Council (GNYC), the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association (GRPA), the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN) and Come Alive Network Inc (CANI).
According to Presidential Adviser on Youth Empowerment Aubrey Norton, there will be, by the end of November, not just a National Youth Policy but also a five-year strategic plan which the Education Minister will present to cabinet for approval.
Further, Norton noted that the technical expertise from the current session will be used in conjunction with a consultant provided by an international organisation to prepare a five year strategic plan, which will be aimed at empowering young people.
He further proposed that a high level inter-agency committee, comprising representatives from ministries which have a role to play in the empowerment of young people, such as education and social protection, monitor the implementation of the policy. He said this is to be approached from a community perspective, with smaller working groups being used to communicate the content of the policy and plan to youths across the nation.
“As a government, we are going to listen to your concerns; take your recommendations seriously; we are going to work with you as partners,” Minister of Education Dr Rupert Roopnaraine promised those gathered during his presentation.
He urged youths to fully participate in the process of governance and to hold the present government accountable for its promises. He also urged them not to just create another report, but “to be crusaders for national reconciliation [as] we won’t move forward as a nation without national unity and national reconciliation.”
The taskforce then began by evaluating the draft profile of the Guyanese youth. This profile is to be used as a working definition of an ideal Guyanese youth and thus inform the final youth policy as to what would constitute the right environment in which such an individual can be developed and encouraged.
During the discussion, participants observed that the profile is both too restrictive and too broad. Activist Vidyaratha Kissoon noted that the profile calls for the Guyanese youth to “identify with things Guyanese,” a directive he found worrying since there are several negatives which are considered Guyanese, such as consumption of alcohol and the use of corporal punishment. Still, other stakeholders felt that requirements of respect for the environment and elderly should be included in the profile of the ideal Guyanese youth.
Ryan Hoppie of the CANI called for the request to respect elders to be generalised to respect for other groups, particularly marginalised groups.
After each suggestion, the presenter was encouraged by Norton in his role as chair of the discussion to submit a “draft” of the changes they wished to be encapsulated in the new policy.
This came after Roopnaraine had earnestly declared, “We have reports on everything; I don’t want any more reports. What I’m interested in is implementation. Any report that comes without an implementation or action plan will not be one I spend a lot of time on.”
