Kiwanis Club pushes for more male youth leaders

The Kiwanis Club of Barbados is stepping up efforts to engage more young men in its service and leadership programmes, amid growing concern that boys are increasingly reluctant to take on leadership roles.

Speaking at the installation of 29 new members of the revitalised Key Club at St George Secondary School on Friday, Karen Bascombe, the outgoing president of the Kiwanis Club of Barbados Benevolence, said the organisation is intentionally working to inspire boys to lead.

“We are seeing a lot more females. There are a lot more interested, but I guess it’s the programme,” Bascombe said.

“When they see, like for instance, we have Jaheim. He is our governor for the Key Club, and he’s a real inspiration. So we would have Jaheim come to different meetings that we would have, and he would speak to his key clubbers. And it is how you influence, what you say, what you do, the programmes that you have. We find out we are having some more males join Kiwanis, and that is a plus for us.”

Jaheim Carter, a 17-year-old sixth-form student at Combermere School and current governor of the Kiwanis Key Club Caribbean Atlantic District, said his own leadership journey has revealed the unique challenges young men face.

“In our generation, it’s a lot more difficult, it’s a lot more challenging being a male leader than being a female leader, in my eyes, because there’s more female leaders now than male leaders,” Carter said. “So yes, we have persons to look up to, but sometimes you have to look up to yourself. You have to be the best version of yourself, in the sense where you know you have people to lead. You have to do this, you have to do that.

Leadership is very important in this organisation.”

Carter, who recently represented Barbados at the Key Club International Convention in Orlando, Florida, said the experience deepened his commitment to recruiting more young men into the fold.

“Bringing more males into Key Club was literally my theme, because … I did not have a lot of persons in Barbados to look up to. Look at our prime minister, our president, look at our ministry, and all; there are only a select few males who are actually, you know, up there. And to me, I wanted to change that. You know, if it can make a change from the youth and bring it up, you know, Barbados should be a better place.” (LG)