CYP hosts first ever ‘Students Leaders Round Table’

Nov 21, 2010 News

---

The Commonwealth Youth Programme (CYP)’s Caribbean Centre has successfully piloted a new initiative aimed at strengthening the voice of youths throughout the region – this time with a focus on student movements.
Launched on Wednesday, last – a day that also happens to be International Students Day – the ‘Round Table’ session was completed on Friday, with the handing over of a communiqué intended to see the launching of a Regional Students’ Movement.
The effort was a three-day exercise under the banner of the CYP’s first Commonwealth Caribbean Regional Students Leaders Round Table.
It was launched at the University of Guyana where all three days of activities were held and the theme of the Round Table was ‘Leading with Integrity – Optimising the Potential of Caribbean Student Youth Leadership.’
The intention behind the Round Table is to create more opportunities for Student leaders throughout the region to interface with policy makers.
According to the Commonwealth Heads of Government and its Youth Ministers in a recent meeting, “Empowering young people means creating and supporting the enabling conditions under which they can act on their own behalf, and on their own terms, rather than at the direction of others.”
The exercise was an effort by the CYP to create the enabling conditions for such consultation between young people and their leaders.
The focus on Student Leaders comes from the recent formation of a youth forum exclusively dedicated to this cross section of the youth movement. Organized in the wings of the 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) held in June of last year, the forum sought to bring the concerns of this group of youths to the fore. During that meeting, the Youth Forum stressed the need to encourage students’ councils and the need to establish student bodies free from political interference.
The concept note on the Round Table exercise states that the Youth Forum recommended that “the Commonwealth develops standards for the governing of student bodies and organizations,” thus making it the remit of the Secretariat and the CYP to support the strengthening of student youth organisations.
It goes on to say that the ability of the student youth to organise themselves democratically is seen as integral to raising vital concerns they may have in respect of their education, their rights and opportunities, among other concerns. According to the note, “the CYP is committed to exploring with student youth networks the re-activation of democratic student movements by coordinating secondary and tertiary student representatives and involving them in decision-making about education policies.”
This was exactly what the Round Table sessions sought to do according to Mr.Henry Charles, Regional Director of the Commonwealth Youth Programme.
The Regional Students Movement Round Table (RSMR) would have integrated leaders of a representative sample of students’ movements in Commonwealth Caribbean countries, as part of its first step towards the development of a full regional network of student youth movements.
The exercise provided participants with the opportunity to understand challenges of student youth leadership and the student movement bodies’ needs in terms of effective youth engagement and participation.
Also being considered were possibilities of building national and regional networks of student youth organisations as well as determining mechanisms to support the strengthening and improved effectiveness of such organisations. It was also a push to forge better linkages and improve integration with the Commonwealth, the CYP, Youth Ministries, youth governance movements and other strategic partners.
The communiqué handed over at the close of the Programme reads: “The value of education can never be understated. Education is not a privilege but is the right of every individual.”
The participants of the Round Table shared the particulars and challenges of their institutions and after the common needs of the region were compiled they worked to find solutions to these issues and to create a model students’ movement structure that could be taken back home and deployed in their local spheres.
Coming out of all of this was a unanimous decision by the Round Table to commission a team to commence work on a draft proposal for a Regional Students’ Movement.
They outlined the challenges to such a move and laid out a number of recommendations to overcome these difficulties as well as a number of short and long term goals. According to the communiqué, “The projected aim … is to produce affirmative young leaders with the capacity to function in a professionally demanding environment. This, in itself would strengthen the region’s human resource and, with key strategizing, formulate long-term regional networks with core stakeholders at all levels of governance.”
According to Mr. Charles, this Round Table is to be a ‘pilot’ for the programme and based on the outcome of the events here in Guyana, the initiative will be rolled out in the other countries in the region.
He noted that it was kicked off on Wednesday because November 17th 2010 is International Students’ Day. The day has been marked every year since 1941 to commemorate the events in 1939 when Czech students took to the streets of Prague in protest against the Nazi invasion.
In echoes of those protests, students in the United Kingdom have taken to the streets to raise their voices against a Government that is seeking to cut funding for higher education by some 40 per cent while practically tripling tuition fees at the same time.
Gathered in for the Round Table were student leaders representing colleges and universities from all across the Caribbean.
Some of the countries with student leaders present were Belize, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Montserrat, Suriname, Turks & Caicos and Trinidad & Tobago. For the University of Guyana there were members of the University’s Student Society as well as the International Student Association present.

---

---