Damani Parris, Kevin Manning and Michael Joseph, Project Coordinators for the UWI Youth Development Programme and the Young Entrepreneurs Symposium and Display.
A number of Project Coordinators for the UWI Youth Development Programme are determined to highlight the positive things young males in Barbadian society are doing, to counteract some of the negative actions some have been engaging in.
Damani Parris, Kevin Manning and Michael Joseph, Project Coordinators for the UWI Youth Development Programme, have been instrumental in putting together the Young Entrepreneurs Symposium and Display, which formed part of the International Men’s Day (IMD) Week of Activities, ahead of the celebration of International Men’s Day on Sunday November 19.
“We have to really highlight what exactly are the positive contributions being made by young males in Barbados and in the region generally, which is really our concern at the UWI Youth Development Programme,” Parris, who served as spokesperson for the group, noted.
“Regionally, we hear a lot about what young men are doing wrong and it is very easy to villainise young men because they are the most persons responsible for crime and
violence and so on. But I think it is also necessary that we point out that there are young men making very positive contributions to the economy and that they really are out there making real, substantive change to the society as we know it, and that needs to be highlighted more,” Parris stated.
He meanwhile noted that this will be the aim of the IMD Symposium.
“Right now we are actually looking at young males who are engaging in particularly innovative areas in the economy, and what we are trying to do is really just promote those young entrepreneurs who are doing exciting things, those especially who are trailblazers in different areas.
“So for example, we are targeting persons from the renewable energy sector, young people who are doing innovative things in agriculture, things that are not necessarily conventional,” he explained.
“So we have persons who are dealing with aquaponics, persons who are dealing with pisciculture, which of course is the farming of fish, and of course persons who combine both of those things. So we are targeting persons like that, who are actually bringing something to the economy, something new, different,” he said.
Parris also noted that a young man who has been instrumental in converting the Sargassum seaweed into manure was also scheduled to share his experience at the Symposium.
Parris stressed, “We really want to highlight these young men who are blazing a trail for themselves through the economy and showing that young persons, especially young males, can really innovate and problem solve and make society better if they put their minds to it.”
(RSM)