Faith-based groups launch major youth push

Three faith-based organisations are hoping to reach over a thousand young Barbadians with programmes that will develop their interest in the creative arts, skills and sports while offering the psychosocial support needed to thrive.

These organisations were among those announced on Thursday who were awarded under the Faith-based Special Grant Fund through the $5m grant facility.

Health coordinator of the East Caribbean Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and Chair of the grant, Dr Natalie Greaves, announced the Rise Youth 2030 project, a multi-year initiative aimed at renewing young people and helping them take charge of their future.

The programme hopes to reach 1 000 young people across Barbados, engage their families and with the support of 80 to 150 mentors.

“Our project is actually a parallel project that contains parenting sessions, etc. Now the second year of the project is called Invest, and Invest is a multifocal investment, so investment in creative arts, investment in discipline, investment in education, in terms of [Caribbean Vocational Qualifications], etcetera. and more importantly, there’s also a vision, a wider vision to enhance the digital transformation space, so investing in the ability of youth to enhance their technological skills.”

She stated that based on the church’s research on risk factors for interpersonal violence in Barbados, and its network of 54 churches, the church has identified centres of excellence where young people can access mentorship and support for both youth and their parents.

“We want to have these centers of excellence so they are strategically mapped geographically to have centers of excellence where young persons can have mentorship opportunities and support opportunities, then finally, the empower is a peer support mechanism where after you’ve gone through this character building, wealth building, skills development process, inclusive of the creative arts, we are also then leveraging your ability to mentor your peers.”

Dr Greaves said they would also be using existing programmes such as the Adventurers and Pathfinder Clubs as well as the Band Ministries as leverage.

“We have a very strong educational and health system, so we have teaching support that’s available through our primary schools, but what is not often recognized is that our CVQ skill set is something that we’re also going to be leveraging and as it relates to where the parenting and the mentorship comes in, we have a family ministry, and that family ministry has a strong psychological, psychosocial support mechanism.”

The chair of the programme confirmed that the programme will run for four years.

She added that the programme was developed with the support of experienced professionals in the fields of education, youth and spiritual development, as well as strong input from youth.

“In particular, Dr Cheryl Weeks, who brought a lot of the educational support, Mrs  Carlotta Challenger, who has experience even at the Caribbean Examination level, Julia Sealy for the youth ministry and also, Pastor Sean Shepherd and all of the young people because this is a collaborative effort so we didn’t just sit as adults and technocrats and with all of our multidisciplinary expertise and and build this up we actually had, the input of the youth voices.”

The programme will use churches across the island as centres of excellence, while the Conference Dalkeith complex in St Michael will be used for activities such as marching, drill and Pathfinder Band ministry.

The Combine Faith Christian Sports Evangelism Ministry hopes to reach 100 young people through various sporting disciplines, primarily through basketball and road tennis.

Its president and sports director, Dean Squires, hopes to take sports into two primary and two secondary schools in the initial instance, targeting students aged 8 to 16.

“We want to be in every single sporting discipline, but currently, we are in basketball and road tennis but even with the success of this particular project, we want to get into every single sporting discipline.”

“We want to reach that 100 mark, whether is … 30 each at the two secondary and 20 each at the primary, but we want to reach that 100 mark, even in this one particular project.”

He says following the initial running of the programme they will determine what direction to go next.

“Our programmes run all year round, but this specific project, yeah, we will assess, see how we can expand and Then go from there in terms of increasing for the next year, so it’ll be a multi-year, with this year being the, the year we assess.”

The Roman Catholic Church hopes to target unemployed and vulnerable young people between the ages of 16 to 25.

“We look to the vicinity of about 40 to 60 and we’re looking to help them if they are unemployed or if they are on the streets. We try to help them to move from that position,” said Bishop Neil Scantlebury.

He added that the ultimate goal is to help participants become self-sufficient, independent and regain a sense of dignity.

“We will work to help give them what tools they need and we do some psychosocial work and we do some work whereby, whereby they need to See, Whereby basically we look to help them, whatever the skills they need to get, So that we can go forward.”

Training will be provided by people from within the church and the wider Barbados community, the bishop added.

(LG)