Corporate Barbados ‘could do more’ against violence

Corporate Barbados may not be playing a significant enough a role in the fight against violence, Crime Stoppers Barbados’ chief Oral Reid has complained.

Pointing to Crime Stoppers’ school programme as an example, Reid revealed that despite rave reviews from several principals, a lack of funding threatened the initiative’s continuation into another year.

Reid said: “There is greater scope for the teaching of anger management in schools.

“We know that there are a number of non-governmental organisations that are supporting the educational institutions and they are doing so with the support of the principals of the schools. Crime Stoppers is one of those institutions.

“We have a very interesting programme which has served over 22,000 students over the last seven years.

“I have a lot of confidence in the programme and I believe that it is something that should be cascaded across every primary and secondary school in Barbados.

“However, like most non-governmental organization willing to help, we are struggling with a lack of finance in order to maintain these programmes.

“This September we were unable to roll out the programme in two new primary schools simply because the finances were not available to us.”

Predicting that 2019 will go down as the country’s bloodiest year, with 43 murders so far, Reid contended that instilling life skills such as conflict resolution at an early age is now critical to veering Barbados from its violent trajectory.

But he stressed that this was not a mission which could be accomplished on the strength of Government and a few organizations alone.

Reid said: “We are appealing to Corporate Barbados to recognize that the students who are being nurtured and developed in our schools, will come to them as employees in the future.

“We are all in this together and except we invest in such programmes, we are likely to be complicit in abandoning our society’s future.

“Government cannot do this alone, it has to be a collaborative effort with the agencies that have the funds, so that we can put more effort behind this very important initiative.”

But the former police commander noted that a sense of civic duty should not only come in the form of money but also through volunteerism, as he believes that Barbados desperately needs to get back to the precepts of the old adage, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.

He told Barbados TODAY: “I would have thought that at this juncture of our development, we would have realized that there is a gap between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., where our children are left unsupervised.

“The challenge for organisations , the state and average Barbadians, is to come up with creative means of filling this gap.

“This is a common problem, especially in the areas which are seen as the hotspots for crime.

“When you look at Eden Lodge, Silver Hill and other hot spots, this is a serious deficit, which no one has tabled a solution for and unless this gap is filled, this cycle of crime will be repeated.” colvillemounsey@barbadostoday.bb