(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) “Young people are our future. They are our jewels and they are worth fighting for…Whatever necessary tools that can be used in the war against drug abuse, let us spare no effort in deploying them.”

This is the word from Antigua and Barbuda’s Minister of Health, Social Transformation, Prices and Consumer Affairs, the Hon. Wilmoth Daniel, as he addressed an audience of primarily young people who are attending a five-day workshop on the use of edutainment strategies for primary drug prevention in St John’s, Antigua and Barbuda.

The workshop is organised by the Caribbean Community Secretariat in tandem with the Ministry of Health Social Transformation, Prices and Consumer Affairs and supported with funding from the 9th EDF Programme. Its primary aim is to assist CARICOM Member States to utilise edutainment as an effective strategy for transmitting information on drug prevention to youth audiences.

Applauding edutainment as a potent vehicle in reaching young people with anti-drug messages, Minister Daniel noted that young people were being bombarded daily with messages about the so-called ‘good life’ of drugs, sex and other risky behaviours, through the mass media and new media. In an effort to counter this, he said, policy makers and practitioners must feed, as aggressively yet excitingly, positive messages to the youth using the media to which young people are attracted, and with which they interface on a regular basis.

The medium of edutainment, according to the Minister, was effective in disseminating information to young people on healthy lifestyle, social and judicial consequences of substance abuse, as well as information on the programmes and services for drug treatment and rehabilitation.

Over the next four days, participants representing 13 Member States will be using the edutainment strategies they learn in the workshop to develop drug prevention and other positive life skills messages that will be used on Saturday, 3 July, in a street theatre production designed to educate and entertain youth audiences in St John’s Market Square.

The workshop is being facilitated by Dr Paloma Mohamed, Director of the Centre for Communication Studies at the University of Guyana; Riane de Haas-Bledoeg, CARICOM Secretariat’s Deputy Programme Manager, Culture, representatives from the Jamaica-based Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, and Street Theatre production experts from the Guyana-based Merundoi Organisation.

Final year students of the University of Guyana’s Centre for Communication Studies are filming both the process and the end product - the street theatre production – which will be disseminated to the regional media and to Member States.

The opening session was chaired by Ms Norma Jeffrey-Dorset, Substance Abuse Prevention Officer, Antigua and Barbuda. She challenged young people to make use of “this exciting medium” in sensitising their peers about drug use and its resultant dangers.

Contact: piu@caricom.org