Articulating A Vision for Vincentian Youth

The importance of the youth sector in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and its social, economic and political relevance can hardly be stressed enough. There is probably little need to recall that the young people today are the social, economic, and political actors of tomorrow, but it is useful to emphasise that it is among them that the future leaders of industry and government, future teachers, inventors and heads of households can be found. The context in which youth today situate themselves is therefore extremely pertinent to the state of our nation tomorrow.

There are quite diverse opinions on what defines the term youth, even within St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Some people consider youth as an age category, while others think it to be the transitional phase from childhood to adult hood. Others still, see youth as a social construct, based on the impressions of a given society.

Youth as an age category is the most conventional, popular and common sense way in which youth is defined. The proponents of this idea point to the similarity of experiences that young people at the same age tend to have. These common experiences are what make young people define themselves in certain ways as sharing the same fate. For example, the may all feel themselves to be powerless in a society dominated by adults.

The only problem with this approach is that there is often a difficulty in agreeing on where the period starts and ends. The different age bands adopted by the two major international organisations concerned with youth illustrate this point. The United Nation's age band is 14 -24 years, whilst the Commonwealth uses 16-24 years. Our National Youth Policy uses 14-30 years.

We recognise that youth is not only a chronological definition, but also a term used to describe the roles in society ascribed to the young. It would then be useful to exercise flexibility to accommodate young people under 14 years depending on their social and economic circumstances.

The function of youth is this country as elsewhere is therefore at once to ensure, and to prepare for, the continuity of our society, not merely by promoting traditional and conservative values, but by forward-looking visions and contributions. The functions of conservation and innovation are one of the contradictions inherent to the condition of youth. The other is that of transience and permanence. These refer to the relatively brief and passing, yet critical period during which the individual enjoys the status of "youth", and to the fact that at the level of wider society there will always be a youth cohort.

Managing these contradictions is vital to society. Without space for the young segment to challenge, to reshape and even be in contradiction with the past, there will be limited scope for modernisation and acceptable evolution of society. With too rigid and too narrow a framework for participation and change, not only are opportunities lost, but the risk to society increases. It is a constant feature of society to define the margins in which young people can harmoniously integrate existing and past values with the necessary self-definition process for future change. In the modern world, where external influences are many, pervasive and far-reaching, and where the dynamics of change are greater than ever before, this challenge is immense.

NDP Administration has shown that it is aware of these issues, evident in its adoption of a National Youth Policy, and it engagements with the voluntary youth sector. However, there is a need for continuous improvement in the environment for full participation by young people. It therefore requires that we seek to mobilise and integrate the youth of our country into the national decision making processes and against common enemies such as poverty, unemployment, sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS, crime and drug abuse.

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