THE youth arm of the Alliance for Change (AFC) political party, the Youth For Change (YFC) has launched a campaign that seeks to stamp out Domestic Violence from every region of Guyana.
At the small launch of the campaign at the Umana Yana on Sunday, Chairperson of the YFC, Juretha Fernandes, related that it is the role of all Guyanese-even the youth demographic- to stand against domestic violence.
Presenting on Domestic Violence and the role of Youth, she noted: “As every society, local or foreign, we face social ills. Situations that we have the power to either directly or indirectly influence the necessary changes needed to reduce its impact.” And to this end, she posited, “The impact of domestic violence is real.”
Throughout the evening, presentations were made by youths who shared their own knowledge or experiences with domestic violence. They illustrated effectively that domestic violence is a societal ill that affects everyone.
Fernandes related, “We’re going to take a domestic violence campaign throughout the length and breadth of Guyana. We have engaged persons from every region so far, but we have been strategic in the focus that we’re going to take and how we’re going to prioritise the regions,” she said. “We are looking at the statistics for the reported cases of domestic violence and the divisions with the highest number of reported cases are the ones we are going to,” she said.
According to her, there are statistics which show that Guyana has moved from 7069 reported cases of domestic violence cases in 2010, to 2080 reported cases in 2017. For her, while this decrease is remarkable, it is attributed to the myriad of awareness campaigns initiated across Guyana.
Cognisant of the strides that have been made, she opined that the “informed, bold and fierce generation” of youth can add to the efforts of eliminating the issue.
Empowering women has been a tactic used to curb domestic violence, but the YFC is hoping to zero in on the male perspective now.
“We’re going to the communities, we’re going to places where men hang out [because] we want to hear what men have to say about the situations they are having, the difficulties they face and we want men to build a community where they will empower each other so that we will actually try to curb this issue once and for all,” Fernandes said.
And though this is a YFC initiative, other groups have given their support. The chairperson affirmed: “Domestic violence is not a YFC specific thing, it affects all groups and we are prepared to do the right thing to tackle this issue.”
