REGIONAL MEDIA have a bigger role to play in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Adonal Foyle, the towering retired Vincentian-born NBA “big man” believes the Press must engage the youth instead of just pounding them with information if the Caribbean expects its adolescents to better cope with the pandemic.
Foyle expressed the sentiment while delivering the feature address during the Caribbean Broadcast Media Partnership (CBMP) on HIV/AIDS two-day fifth anniversary media leaders’ summit that began yesterday at the Amaryllis Hotel,?Christ?Church.
“Young people are engaged in so many things in their life, it is important that we don’t preach to them [but] help them to understand and how to make decisions for themselves,” said the six-foot-ten former centre.
“As someone from the Caribbean, I can say we have a tendency to say that kids should be seen and not heard, but we’re doing a disservice to them because hitting them and telling them not to do something doesn’t get at the point.
“[So] I cannot tell you how much of an important role it is to have [the media] as part of this campaign, [because] like it or not our kids are more and more being raised by the media and it’s just a reality we have to live with. The difficulty is to have responsible media and responsible parenting,” he added.
Foyle’s keynote address was the highlight of the summit’s morning session that included representatives of 22 regional media houses along with board members, partners and funding organisations of the CBMP recognising World AIDS Day.
UNICEF communication specialist Allison Hickling also launched three new public service announcements for next year’s LIVE UP campaign featuring Jamaican Olympic gold medallists Veronica Campbell-Brown and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and world champion Yohan Blake.
“Sport is a very important mechanism to get the message out because it tells a young person these are the values that we hold dear,” reasoned Foyle, who is also the founder of student organisations Democracy Matters and the Kerosene Lamp Foundation.
“The whole idea behind the Kerosene Lamp Foundation is how [do you] use basketball as an instrument of change? How do you make sports the medium for something much larger?”
Awards of excellence were presented to regional journalists Mitzi Allen, Garfield Burford and Regan De Vines, while CBMP funders, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, were recognised for their contributions.
