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ACDA to recruit young Guyanese for one-year ‘Life Changing’ programme

May 17, 2008 News

The African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA), through the Social Inclusion Fund of the Inter American Development Bank, will during this month and early June recruit and select 30 young people from Agricola, Albouystown and Buxton for a 12-month intensive programme.
The programme entitled “Improving the skill set of at-risk Afro-descendant youth from disadvantaged communities” is aimed at improving their chances to succeed in life.
Five men and an equal number of women will be selected from each community to participate in the project.
Three group leaders, one for each community, and five subject matter experts will also be hired for the programme which will begin during the last week of July with a three-day conference that will also involve their parents or guardians and potential mentors.
The programme, which is the brainchild of Violet Jean-Baptiste and ACDA’s Eric Phillips, is another step in the organisation’s ongoing quest to find solutions to problems facing Guyanese youth.
Philips, in an interview yesterday, said that today, there is general recognition that Guyanese youths face many difficulties relating to their economic participation, employability, susceptibility to the derivatives of narco-trafficking and vulnerability due to high incidences of teenage pregnancy, functional literacy and HIV/AIDS.
He said that in addition to these challenges, Afro-descendant youth from poor and stigmatised communities in Guyana experience multiple jeopardizes akin to stigma-related victimisation, unequal and limited access to resources and opportunities and youth on youth violence. These conditions, according to Phillips, perpetuate the cycle of poverty and human capital under-development.
As a consequence, prolonged poverty conditions have amplified the youth and their communities’ exclusion from wider social and economic participation.
The programme, which took over 14 months to be formulated, has one broad objective which is to provide skills, knowledge and access to business and social networks for those involved so that they, on completion of the programme, can set up their own businesses, become more employable, become leaders in their communities.
The one-year programme is designed to provide these young people with a life changing experience that will positively impact their lives, their families and their communities, according to Ms. Jean-Baptiste.
Ms. Jean-Baptiste said that ACDA believes that there are several problems facing young people in the community that need to be solved because of the many barriers facing them which lead to social exclusion.
As such, the design of the programme will be based on improving the depth and accessibility of the youth, building upon the potential of “at risk” youths to productively contribute to the development efforts of Guyana, and improving the collective action and ‘skill set capacity’ of the youth and their communities to generate and sustain community driven efforts to enhance their welfare and contribute to a reduction in exclusion.
The overall programme will be implemented under a group of elders led by Violet Jean-Baptiste and will include others such as Egerton Cooke.
The mission of the programme is to enable young people to empower themselves educationally, culturally, economically, politically and socially.
At the end of the year, selected young people will receive certificates in the areas of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development, Agriculture and Environmental Management, Healthy Living and Healthy Lifestyles, and Media and Communications.
The 30 students will also go through a “rites of passage” programme which will include exposure to literature, dance, African culture, creativity and drumming, karate, life skills, drama and spoken words, spirituality and life lessons.

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