The Tribune

By RIEL MAJOR

THREE youth centres have been renovated as a part of the government’s Citizen Security and Justice Programme and will be used as a safe environment for young people.

CSJP is funded by a $20m loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

Minister of National Security Marvin Dames has previously said CSJP represents a comprehensive, holistic approach to reducing crime in the country, combining preventative strategies with institutional strengthening activities at both the local and national levels.

Yesterday, Darron Turnquest, director of youth in the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture, took the media on a tour of the centres.

He expressed joy that the Department of Youth has been included in CSJP.

“It gave us an opportunity to decentralise the work that we do within the Department of Youth and the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Culture,” Mr Turnquest said.

He said this allows the ministry to take its work directly into the communities that need help.

“We want to make certain that the focus is there are spaces for you with youth in mind. Not only are the programmes going to be youth-centred, the place itself is going to be also representative of what we see in countries like South Africa, Australia, Canada and the United States.

“I ask people the question, when they often ask me about these youth centres and what it means and the question is, have you seen a Boys and Girls Club or a YMCA or a YWCA kind of spirit for young people in this country, and that has not been present or as robust as we would like it for young people, and this is the opportunity for us to create just that.”

The centres are located in Big Pond, Fox Hill and Quakoo Street.

Rochelle Lightbourne, a coordinator of the programme, said: “The government has accepted this initiative and this challenge to create an all-inclusive integrated approach to prevent crime and violence in the country.

“We want to be able to give young people an opportunity to have a safe environment to have some activities they can draw from that will help to empower, encourage, and motivate them. We do (that) through a number of ways – there are some training initiatives that we are doing, we talked about the gender-based violence and the sexual prevention.

“We need to look at the conflict resolution because one of the things that is very important to us is preventing crime finding those non-violent conflict resolution strategies where people have an opportunity to do things that is different from picking up a weapon and doing harm.

“The other is to look at some life skills and safe dates, we want to go into the schools and give students the opportunity to think about what a healthy relationship looks like, what is healthy when it comes to resolving family conflicts. We have so many dysfunctional family units in the country, so we want to address those,” she said.