THE Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) administration on Tuesday made available a building at Leonora to the Guyana Police Force (GPF) to facilitate the training of youths in the district in information technology and cookery. According to Regional Executive Officer (REO), Denis Jaikaran, the idea is to foster closer ties with the force by ensuring that youths in the region benefit from whatever skills training are on offer through courses and programmes at a community level.
He said the region fully supports whatever initiative the force, specifically ‘D’ Division, may have in mind for the advancement of youths in the region, and that as fast as facilities become available, they will be handed over to the police to do with as they see fit.
“There are a few unoccupied buildings in the region, and it is our intention to hand these buildings over to the GPF,” he said, adding: “And I have had conversations with the Commander, and we will go and have a check in the region to identify edifices which can be utilised by the police.”
Both the IT and cookery classes, he said, will be run by the police and the NGO, ‘Cops and Faith Network’ in an effort to enrich the lives of those youths who may have fallen through the cracks, particularly the school drop-outs and the delinquent.
According to Head of ‘D’ Division, Commander Stephen Mansell, it is the first such partnership that has been forged among the regional administration, the police, and faith-based organisations, and that the facility at reference will boast an Internet-ready computer centre, so as to make it easy for the youths to access information and do research whenever they need to.
He said Food For the Poor has also chipped in by donating six desk-top computers to the cause, and that the cookery section comes with a fully equipped kitchen. The cookery courses, he said, which will be six weeks in duration, will be facilitated by trained staff from the Madina Restaurant.
The target groups for these courses are youths between the ages of 14-25, early school-leavers and the unemployed from the villages of Den Amstel to Uitvlugt.
At the end of the course, Manesll said, they could either branch out into their own businesses, or go further their studies in the culinary field at such institutions of higher learning as the Carnegie School of Home Economics.
Plans are also in train, he said, to have a fully functioning library at the same location, since they already have a collection of books, compliments of the Leonora Secondary School.
This is one of many community-based initiatives started by the police in that division to develop the lives of youths by way of partnerships. (Michel Outridge)