The Tribune

The Governor General’s Youth Award is expanding into inner city communities to reach even more high-risk youths.

The new push was revealed at a press conference on Monday held to announce Anglican Archdeacon James Palacious as the new chairman of GGYA’s management council, the body responsible for the day-to-day running of the programme. He takes over from Jack Thompson.

“Government has been good to us in terms of contributions. We have to make sure those funds are spread as widely as possible to impact as many people as possible,” said Archdeacon Palacious.

“We want to train a new generation who could be enthusiastic about perpetuating what has happened here. As we move on, we expect nothing but great things to happen. We do not want an elitist type programme… to say we are all whistle clean,” he said.

“We want to say we took some fish from out there who needed cleaning up…They are the kind of persons who could go back into those areas and really try to influence the people that they would have grown up with.”

According to GGYA’s national executive director, Denise Mortimer, youth empowerment for the marginalised is not an entirely new thrust.

About 100 young men from the Youth Empowerment And Skills Training (YEAST) Institute previously received their Bronze Award.

Education Minister Jeff Lloyd founded the now defunct programme in the late 1990s to help rescue at-risk males from a cycle of violence, poverty and failure. He served as its executive director.

Also, GGYA once had units comprised of residents from the Simpson Penn Centre for Boys and the Willie Mae Pratt Centre for Girls – residential care facilities for juveniles with court convictions.

According to Ms Mortimer, the goal is to revive relationships with rehabilitative agencies, in addition to creating an open unit for youths not enrolled in school, college or any organisations. A Gold Award Holder – a person who has reached the highest rung in GGYA – would run the open unit with assistance from others who matriculated through the programme.

“Our mandate has to be reaching the at-risk and the inner city young people,” said Ms Mortimer. “The programme is available to anyone. Anyone can do it. You just have to want to do it, want to make a personal achievement.”

For over a quarter of a century no GGYA participant had ever been brought before the courts, said chairman of the GGYA’s board of trustees John Bethell Jr. “I think that says something,” he noted.

Other expansion plans on the drawing board include the possible launch of a unit at Bahamas Agriculture and Marine Science Institute (BAMSI) in North Andros and reviving units in the Northern Bahamas, specifically Grand Bahama, Abaco, Bimini and the Berry Islands.