The goal of CARICOM’s Youth initiative is to facilitate the development and empowerment of young people in the Region. Such empowerment is attained through the provision of knowledge and information; the skills to use that information wisely; and the resources, values and attitudes to promote active participation in decision making and in program development, implementation and management.

One major programme currently engaging the purview of the youth division of CARICOM is the CYAP/PANCAP Mini-Grant Programme, which holds considerable clout in revolutionising the status of youth across the Caribbean.

The Mini-Grant Project was a sub-component of the 2004 – 2006 Regional PANCAP-Global Fund project which offered grants to youth organisations to implement community-base HIV/AIDS project. It was initiated in March 2005 after consultations with youths during the previous year which teased out issues of operationalizing the Project. “The implementation strategy is one that is heavily influenced by young people themselves” Dr. Johnson noted.

Deputy Programme Manager, Caribbean Community Development, at the CARICOM Secretariat, Dr. Heather Johnson, has pinpointed the major strength of this project, as inducing CARICOM into agglomerating into one project, guidelines that have been developed for a collaborative youth agenda. Dr. Johnson interpreted this outcome as youth “becoming everybody’s business.” She strongly holds that youth cannot be distinguished as a sector, rather as a target group that permeates every agenda within the CARICOM Secretariat; agriculture, education, culture, included.

The PANCAP Mini-Grant Programme, administered by CARICOM Youth Ambassadors, tackles HIV/AIDS issues in several disadvantaged communities of the Region. The project was actively developed by youths with an innovative style that invigorates their empowerment. The youths involved welcomed the opportunity of working together and along with other stakeholders to not only achieve the objectives of the project.

“For example, although Mini-Grant is an HIV/AIDS programme, it is a programme that allows young people to work with each other at the national level, in terms of developing the national work plan and implementing the national work plan,” Dr Johnson said.

CARICOM provides the CARICOM Youth Ambassadors with technical support at the regional level and creates the platform for their working relationship with Departments of Youth Affairs, youth leaders and young residents of targeted communities at the National level.

“It is a project implemented by young people in partnership with adults and we think that this is the way for all Members States to go, because no one has all the answers. When you collaborate you form synergies and cut back on the amount of duplication among programmes.”

Training and Execution

A number of training manuals were developed to groom youth for the job at hand.

Community Resource Mapping training enabled the young people to interact with and ascertain features of selected communities such as:

• The number of young people and resources (e.g. health clinics, bars, schools) in the community
• The level of employment/unemployment among young people in the community
• The incidence of HIV/AIDS in the community
• community-based organisations that serve or are resident in the community
• The risk factors that can lead to HIV/AIDS

This module also trained young people in communication and other skills, which facilitated their easy intercourse with community members in executing a physical map of the community’s resources (the number of houses, schools, churches, bars, strip clubs etc.).

“That mapping enables them to come up with a situation analysis. For example, in one community in a particular country, there were a large number of young people, yet there was no school and no church. The health clinic had stopped operating, the recreational facility was overtaken with weeds, but yet there were five bars, Dr. Johnson noted.

The situation analysis which is developed informs the Project and also helps to find those community based organisations who would be invited to the two additional phases of training.

An HIV/AIDS sensitisation workshop that reviews HIV/AIDS facts and strategies, a Project Development and proposal writing workshop, in which the actual projects are developed, and another short course in monitoring and evaluation concluded the training.

The Mini-Grant Project is currently being conducted in communities of The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname.

Grant recipients receive a maximum of US$5,000 to run each community-based project for a maximum of six months and are encouraged to establish sub-committees to tackle their various areas of work.”

Dr. Johnson says, “Our hope is that they will not only continue in relation to HIV/AIDS work, but that they would have a better chance of accessing funds from other organisations because they would have a better approach to project development and proposal writing.”

Funding

Global Fund’s original commitment to the Mini-Grant programme was US$250,000 grant funds over a five year period. Later CARICOM was able to successfully partner with other organisations, such as United Nations Children’s Fund, World Bank, United Nations Population Fund, Red Cross and GTZ in raising supplementary grant and capacity building funds because the Mini-Grant Project aligns with their own goals and objectives.

Youth policy

Dr. Johnson acknowledges that CARICOM’s role is to create an enabling environment for youth to thrive and that this is realised through standardising policy among Member States.

CARICOM’s youth agenda pivots around its Regional Strategy for Youth Development that has four thematic priorities. These areas are:

1. Adolescent and youth health

2. Adolescent and youth protection

3. Adolescent and Youth participation, leadership and governance

4. Social and economic issues affecting young people

These areas represent regional youth development priorities issues, and together with research, policy development and monitoring and evaluation represent the scope of CARICOM’s work relative to youth.

“Within that scope we do things like research and consultation. But whether you’re talking drugs or crime it fits into one of these thematic areas. This says that if all member states are to advance in the area of youth development then those (thematic) areas are areas in which all Members States have to make progress,” Dr. Johnson pointed out.

She acknowledged that Members States are at different levels with regard to youth development approaches. Barbados, for example, is perceived as having the strongest youth development programme that engages research and evidence-based approaches.

CARICOM Youth Ambassador Programme

The CARICOM Youth Ambassador Programme (CYAP) is the Community’s institutional arrangement for youth participation. CYAPs advocate for and educate young people about issues on CARICOM’s agenda, in particular HIV and AIDS and CARICOM Single Market and Economy, and empower young people to take advantage of and contribute to the region’s social and economic programmes and policies. The CARICOM Youth Ambassador Programme involves youths, male and female, for gender balance, from each Member State who are appointed for a term of three years.

“This is another opportunity for empowering young people with leadership skills. We also encourage them to work collaboratively; to work with the National Youth Councils and other organisations. One of the lessons we’ve learned is that in order to attract young people you have to put something in ways that they will understand; so they must be involved in the planning and discussion,” Dr Johnson said.

She pointed to the fact that for the last two stagings of CARIFESTA the CARICOM Youth Ambassadors coordinated and facilitated “youth focus”. Dr. Johnson has also reported growth in that 14 Member States now have National Youth Councils or Interim Councils.

“In the Caribbean (back in the 60s when there were no Ministries of youth) we had a dynamic structure for youth governance. Youth, especially in the Eastern Caribbean, were very vocal and sometimes considered anti-government in advocating policies for youth. And it was out of youth advocacy in the OECS, particularly, that Youth Ministries were born.” Dr. Johnson said.

She observed that today’s challenge is in the reminiscence of that era, with Ministries viewing young people as antagonistic.

Dr. Johnson said, “The people in charge now of policies, they recognise at the cerebral level that youth participation is important in developing policy, the policies are for youth and they have to involve them. Government is now reaching out to youth who have more opportunity to sit on boards and even get involved in all stages of policy and project development.”

Youth Empowerment

Considering the empowerment of youth over the last five to 10 years, Dr. Johnson said that the number of opportunities that have opened up to young people are tremendous, not just at the individual level, but also in terms of leadership and participation in governance bodies at the national level.

“A decade ago there were many more voices asking for opportunities and demanding opportunities. Now the ball is in the other hand; the opportunities are there; it is now a question of youth building capacity to take full advantage of those opportunities,” Dr. Johnson said.

Challenges Regarding challenges in tackling youth affairs at CARICOM, Dr. Johnson says that more human resources are needed to see projects and programmes through. Moreover, the bureaucratic structure of governance has to be altered in order to reach more young people, especially those that are not college bound. Dr. Johnson’s expression of a personal vision is “to see young people who have the skills and motivation and the creativity to deal with the challenges and coping with all the things that are thrown at them.”