It's well known that crime erad­i­ca­tion must be tack­led from many an­gles, in­clud­ing out­reach pro­grammes in at-risk com­mu­ni­ties that of­fer young peo­ple al­ter­na­tives to the lure of crim­i­nal-mind­ed peers.

Such pro­grammes are not of­ten tossed to the fore­front of pub­lic at­ten­tion as quick­ly as the neg­a­tive events are, but hold ma­jor sig­nif­i­cance to the turn­around of our crime sit­u­a­tion when done ef­fec­tive­ly.

This is the case with the Mpow­erTT pro­gramme just com­plet­ed by the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment that cul­mi­nat­ed with the grad­u­a­tion of over 200 young and vul­ner­a­ble men on Sat­ur­day.

The pro­gramme aimed to en­gen­der hope, some­thing we all des­per­ate­ly need af­ter record­ing the high­est homi­cide fig­ure in our his­to­ry last year.

To ef­fec­tive­ly present a sin­gle vul­ner­a­ble man with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to take him away from neg­a­tive in­flu­ences is a win in it­self. To do so with 200 of them, should not go unan­nounced.

The facts as they are can­not be sug­ar-coat­ed.

The young men who took to the podi­um at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny are the types eas­i­ly stereo­typed for their rugged out­ward ap­pear­ances and, more sim­plis­ti­cal­ly, for the com­mu­ni­ties they re­side in.

Yet, their very pres­ence there proved their com­mit­ment to reach high­er de­spite the chal­lenges they face.

To grad­u­ate, they each had to com­plete sev­er­al months of cours­es care­ful­ly de­signed by the min­istry and strong­ly sup­port­ed by the po­lice, busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and The Bar­cam, a de­vel­op­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion pri­mar­i­ly in­volved in the ex­e­cu­tion of ac­tiv­i­ties and pro­grammes aimed at the de­vel­op­ment of youth, com­mu­ni­ties and oth­ers.

It in­volved the cre­ation of spaces known as Mzones, where men could talk with old­er men­tors about top­ics such as the de­f­i­n­i­tion of a man, re­spect, their role in so­ci­ety, avoid­ing gang vi­o­lence and crime, sex­u­al health and oth­er is­sues.

The next stage in­volved life skills train­ing such as din­ing eti­quette, fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and prepa­ra­tion of busi­ness pro­pos­als.

Phase three fo­cused on a psy­cho­log­i­cal and skill as­sess­ment, where­in life coach­es and psy­chol­o­gists were present to spend time with each of the par­tic­i­pants work­ing through their par­tic­u­lar is­sues.

In the last stage, par­tic­i­pants were placed in paid in­tern­ships for ten weeks in their par­tic­u­lar field of in­ter­est.

On Sat­ur­day, they were sup­port­ed by a packed ball­room of par­ents, busi­ness of­fi­cials, se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers - in­clud­ing for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald Ja­cob - and sev­en Cab­i­net mem­bers and Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment.

It was, quite right­ly so, a cel­e­bra­tion of their com­mit­ment and de­ter­mi­na­tion to dare to be dif­fer­ent in com­mu­ni­ties known more for their ills than suc­cess­es.

The pro­gramme, the brain­child of Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe, op­er­at­ing un­der a man­date by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to change the neg­a­tive stereo­types about young peo­ple, will be re­cy­cled each year, tar­get­ing more young peo­ple in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

The min­istry and all those who con­tributed are on the right road and de­serve all the sup­port they can get in mak­ing this pro­gramme a grow­ing suc­cess.

But above all, we salute the young men who grad­u­at­ed from the MPow­erTT pro­gramme for the re­silience and in­spi­ra­tion they have shown in the steps they took over the last six months.