KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor–News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty has launched the Re­silient Youth cam­paign aimed at giv­ing young peo­ple greater ac­cess to sup­port, men­tor­ship and in­ter­ven­tions to help them deal with chal­lenges with­out turn­ing to crime.

The ini­tia­tive comes as con­cerns about youth vi­o­lence and be­hav­iour have in­ten­si­fied, in­clud­ing a school fight on the first day of the new term and a re­cent in­ci­dent in To­ba­go in­volv­ing a teenag­er and the death of a pen­sion­er.

Di­rec­tor of Pol­i­cy and Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port Za­heer Ali and psy­chol­o­gist Anu Bisses­sar dis­cussed the ini­tia­tive dur­ing an ap­pear­ance on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew on Mon­day.

Ali said the pro­gramme would com­ple­ment on­go­ing psy­choso­cial in­ter­ven­tions and ed­u­ca­tion­al en­gage­ments in schools.

He added the ini­tia­tive would al­so build on the place­ment of po­lice of­fi­cers in 51 schools, with the fo­cus mov­ing be­yond sup­press­ing or de­tect­ing prob­lem­at­ic be­hav­iour to ad­dress­ing some of the fac­tors that in­flu­ence young peo­ple’s de­ci­sions.

“The ques­tion is, well, what next af­ter you sup­press?” Ali said. He said re­silience meant recog­nis­ing the chal­lenges young peo­ple faced while still en­cour­ag­ing them to re­main with­in the law.

“I’m hun­gry, so let me go and steal,” and “I’m ex­posed to vi­o­lence, so I should get in vi­o­lence” were not ac­cept­able re­spons­es to hard­ship, he said.

Ali said the pro­gramme would use a two-minute video fea­tur­ing psy­chol­o­gists, crim­i­nol­o­gists, for­mer na­tion­al crick­eters, law en­force­ment of­fi­cers, prison of­fi­cers and so­cial work­ers.

He said the video would serve as a teach­ing tool for young peo­ple, par­ents and teach­ers and would be dis­trib­uted with sup­port from the me­dia and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

The min­istry al­so plans to mea­sure the video’s im­pact through di­rect en­gage­ment with young peo­ple and sur­veys in­volv­ing par­ents.

Ali said the ini­tia­tive would in­clude con­tin­ued school en­gage­ments, a Na­tion­al Par­ent­ing Sem­i­nar, a Na­tion­al Youth Fo­rum and a youth task force.

He said young peo­ple would have op­por­tu­ni­ties to say whether they were aware of the cam­paign, what they had seen and whether its mes­sag­ing had changed the way they thought.

Bisses­sar said young peo­ple want­ed to feel “seen” and “heard” but of­ten lacked an out­let to ex­press them­selves.

“What we are re­al­ly miss­ing is that lens, you know, re­al­ly speak­ing to the young peo­ple where, yes, they want to be seen, they want to be heard, but they don’t have that out­let,” she said.

Bisses­sar said the Re­silient Youth cam­paign and youth fo­rums were im­por­tant be­cause they cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple to en­gage and re­ceive sup­port.

Ali urged com­mu­ni­ties, ac­tivists and youth groups, schools and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions to con­tribute to the ini­tia­tive.

He said the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for sup­port­ing young peo­ple should ex­tend be­yond gov­ern­ment.

“Our na­tion’s youth and chil­dren, it’s every­body’s busi­ness,” Ali said.