HC students bag prizes

Three Harrison College students have walked away with the top prizes in the Ministry of Youth Sports and Community Empowerment National Anti-Violence Essay Competition.

Sarah Bisram who placed first, Jaideen Hewitt who came second and their schoolmate Woletta Israel-Yaicob who took the third position, received their prizes during a presentation ceremony today at the ministry’s training room at Sky Mall, Haggatt Hall, where Minister of Youth Dwight Sutherland gave the assurance that the winning pieces would be used to help craft new programmes and improve existing ones.

He said: “In this regard, this essay competition is not only about winning a prize, but it is also about hearing directly from our youth. I wish to assure all of you that we, in the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment, are carefully listening.

“Indeed, we have heard some of our young people through music presented in the Gimme Piece Pun De Mic competition. We saw their interpretations of the effects of violence and the need for peace in the poster competition, and we heard their fervent cries to stop and end the violence in the Jingle Competition. Today, we are hearing them again in this essay competition.”

Sutherland reinforced that his ministry is prepared to invest the time and the effort to convert the messages of the youth into meaningful and realistic initiatives. He reminded his audience that violence is a scourge that requires continuous and sustained programming.

The minister said the anti-violence campaign, therefore, cannot be a one-year initiative but must continue, in order to ensure that Barbados’ social capital, communities and the youth can live, work and socialize in a safe and secure environment, while enjoying a high-quality life.

The essay competition which targeted students between ages 13 and 15, was conceptualized to cater to the youth with an affinity for writing and a desire to express their views about violence and how it is portrayed by the media.

Sutherland said the capacity of young people to apply their creative skills to the promotion of anti-violence was manifested by the submission of 26 entries over the four weeks of the competition and despite the fact that the ministry was forced to coordinate the competition as an online activity, there was a positive response. The theme of the competition was the Impact of Media Violence on Youth.

The first prize winner received a laptop with a case and a free Microsoft Office subscription for a year, while the second and third place winners received Samsung tablets.

Bisram told Barbados TODAY that while she was pleased with her win, she entered the competition because she initially did not know how media violence impacted the youth.

She said: “I felt the responsibility of a young person that if it is impacting the youth, that I should explore its effects and try to lessen them in my own little way. I feel like violence can be very dangerous and detrimental to the youth.

“I personally would like to raise my children here, but I would like it to be in an environment where there would be limited violence and I would not be scared to allow them to go to school and to allow them to walk home from school.”
(AH)