?Cherisse Moe and Aba A. Luke

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Orville Lon­don is con­fi­dent that the Com­mon­wealth Youth Fo­rum (CYF) will help coun­ter­act the neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of T&T and show­case the na­tion's youth in a pos­i­tive light.

The fo­rum, or­gan­ised joint­ly by the Com­mon­wealth Youth Ex­change and the Com­mon­wealth Youth Pro­gramme, com­mences in To­ba­go to­day and is one of three fo­rums to take place ahead of the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM). Themed In­vest In Youth, Sus­tain The World, the fo­rum brings to­geth­er 600 youths from through­out the Com­mon­wealth. This num­ber com­pris­es 400 from Trinidad, 50 from To­ba­go and 150 from oth­er coun­tries of the Com­mon­wealth. Among the ob­jec­tives were the de­vel­op­ment of young peo­ple's un­der­stand­ing of the Com­mon­wealth and its val­ues; the cre­ation of a plat­form for young peo­ple to con­tribute to CHOGM agen­das; and the pro­mo­tion of net­work­ing be­tween young peo­ple and their or­gan­i­sa­tions. Lon­don said while T&T's youth had been mak­ing head­lines for their in­volve­ment in neg­a­tive ac­tiv­i­ties, the fo­rum would bring to the fore the more pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions of the young pop­u­la­tion.

"I am heart­ened by what is go­ing to take place in To­ba­go. It al­lows the re­gion to high­light the more pos­i­tive as­pects of our de­vel­op­ment," Lon­don said dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view, yes­ter­day. "I am very in­ter­est­ed in see­ing the youth in ac­tion and hear­ing the kind of rec­om­men­da­tions com­ing from this type of in­ter­ac­tion." Lon­don said the ma­jor­i­ty of young peo­ple in T&T were "very fo­cused and pos­i­tive" and the fo­rum was a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to show that to the world. He added that the fo­rum and CHOGM would help to en­hance tourism and in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties in To­ba­go. "As a tourist is­land, we wel­come any op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case the beau­ty of To­ba­go," he said. "Vis­i­tors would have the chance to vis­it the is­land's more scenic ar­eas, such as Buc­coo Reef and the rain for­est."

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was Huey Cadette, As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary for Health and So­cial Ser­vices in the THA, who said: "It's an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn new skills and build new net­works. "To­ba­go will ben­e­fit tremen­dous­ly from the ex­po­sure, es­pe­cial­ly the ho­tel sec­tor...It of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty for peers to en­gage in dis­cus­sions on top­i­cal is­sues af­fect­ing the Com­mon­wealth," he said.