Last week directors of youth affairs, youth leaders and other workers and activists in the area of youth development met in Suriname, under the formal banner of the Seventh Meeting of the CARICOM Directors of Youth, to advance the work of youth development in the Caribbean.
Unbeknownst to many, the mandate of the meeting was nothing less than to give effect to a quiet revolution in youth development which had been set in train since January 2010, when young persons from all over the Caribbean met face to face with CARICOM Heads of Government and placed in their hands the Report of the CARICOM Commission on Youth Development.
What then are the aims of the youth development revolution, and how is this revolution to be effected?
A central demand of the youth development revolution is the need to overcome traditional attitudes to youth development in which young persons are treated as “problems to be solved”. Thus, under the old order, youth workers were seen as a special variants of social workers or correctional officers addressing issues such as teenage pregnancy, gang violence, school dropouts, drug use and all the other social problems which adult society conveniently places at the feet of youth.
When viewed from the perspective of the ancient regime therefore, it is impossible to see youth development as central to national development. Instead, young people are seen as fetters, rather than as contributors to economic growth and social advancement. The revolution in youth development, therefore, advances new arguments for a rethink in the approach.
First, since “young people are our future”, as the mantra goes, any talk of “development” in general implies, ipso facto, that it is the lives of young people which should be central to any such project.
Secondly, young people are not social problems to be corrected, but assets to be tapped. It is indeed worth remembering that some of the most globally recognisable names and faces and some of the biggest money-earners in the Caribbean are the musicians and sports persons who fall within the 15-35 youth age cohort.
Shamefully, we have failed to utilise the income-generating potential of the sports and cultural industries in which our young people enjoy comparative advantage, while bananas, sugar and tourism continue to fail.
Thirdly, given that the new development thrust revolves around the “knowledge economy” in which technology, innovativeness, creativity, services, knowledge and information are the key drivers, young people are naturally placed at the centre.
The revolution in youth development therefore demands that our civil services, private sectors, planners and politicians “get real”.
The meeting in Suriname, therefore, was to finalise a work and policy agenda to bring to life the youth development revolution. To achieve this, our public services must be transformed, to see youth development as synonymous with national development.
Tennyson Joseph is a political scientist at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus specializing in regional affairs. Email tjoe2008@live.com