Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

De­scrib­ing them­selves as "agents of change," stu­dents of Man­zanil­la Sec­ondary school took to the streets, dis­trib­ut­ing pam­phlets and brochures on sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases, teenage preg­nan­cies and ir­re­spon­si­ble sex­u­al be­hav­iour.It was part of their Fan­ta­sy vs Re­al­i­ty-Sex Ed­u­ca­tion dri­ve, which won them sec­ond place in the RBC Young Lead­ers com­pe­ti­tion.This was the sec­ond time the team of 37 stu­dents, head­ed by Make­da Castel­lano, en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion. They host­ed de­bates and lec­tures, dis­trib­uted pam­phlets, held a walk-a-thon and post­ed facts about the ills of un­safe sex on so­cial net­work­ing sites.

Co-or­di­na­tor of the project Gin­ger Lutch­man-Bai­ju­ram said the team adopt­ed the RBC theme "Be the Change." She said their web page(http://bit.ly/1a2jV5q) was used as a chan­nel to spread knowl­edge of safe sex, pre­ven­tion of teenage preg­nan­cy and sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­eases (STDs) through­out the na­tion."The theme was used to high­light teenage preg­nan­cy, the rise of sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­ease vic­tims, abor­tions in the world, our com­mu­ni­ty, so­ci­ety, school and to take an ini­tia­tive to change things. Our young lead­ers be­lieve that each in­di­vid­ual should learn from the mis­take of oth­ers and them­selves and be­come 'agents of change' thus cre­at­ing a pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment with­in them­selves, their home, com­mu­ni­ty and na­tion," Lutch­man-Bai­ju­ram said.

She added that on Feb­ru­ary 9, the lead­ers en­gaged in an aware­ness walk be­fore launch­ing their project at the Man­zanil­la com­mu­ni­ty.It was held the week­end be­fore Car­ni­val in a hope that the mes­sage would be heard and peo­ple would prac­tise safe sex. Lutch­man-Bai­ju­ram said lec­tures were giv­en by the nurse of the Man­zanil­la out­reach health cen­tre to the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion, and the young lead­ers treat­ed the au­di­ence to a skit.A video of the skit was post­ed on YouTube to high­light the con­se­quences of sex. It was aimed at en­cour­ag­ing in­creas­ing teenag­er knowl­edge of pu­ber­ty, sex and preg­nan­cy. Lutch­man said the stu­dents' tes­ti­mo­ni­als showed a lot was learnt about the con­se­quences of sex.A to­tal of 60 oth­er schools par­tic­i­pat­ed in the project.

About Young Lead­ers

The RBC Young Lead­ers Pro­gramme dates back to 1981. It be­gan as an es­say-writ­ing com­pe­ti­tion where can­di­dates wrote about the im­por­tance of sav­ings. By 1984 the pro­gramme broad­ened its scope to en­cour­age com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, chal­leng­ing stu­dents to im­ple­ment sus­tain­able projects that would ben­e­fit their re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ties. This was fol­lowed by two name changes–Star Class in 1988 and Young Lead­ers in 1990. By 2002, an­oth­er com­po­nent, the Young Lead­ers De­bates, was in­tro­duced to pro­vide a fo­rum for stu­dents to build and im­prove pub­lic-speak­ing skills.

To­day, the pro­gramme has ex­pand­ed to touch the lives of young peo­ple in An­tigua, Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St Kitts/Nevis and St Lu­cia. The pro­gramme is open to sec­ondary schools stu­dents in forms three and four.The 2011/2013 theme:Be the change"Stand Up and Be The change". That was the call of the Dalai Lama speak­ing to a group of young peo­ple in the Unit­ed King­dom in June 2012. He chal­lenged them to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their ac­tions, and be the change they want to see in this world.

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