By Shauna Jemmott

NEWS travel fast, and she’s not at all happy with what she’s been hearing. As such, Social Protection Minister Volda Lawrence is calling on educators within the hinterland areas to step up their game.“I am particularly distressed when I think and hear of the high incidence of violations that are meted to our young girls in the hinterland regions,” she told participants of the Fifth Biennial Conference of the Guyana Teachers Union Women’s Advisory Committee, held recently under the theme ‘Striving to develop an awareness to combat the social challenges in our society through leadership training’.

Recent reports in the media indicate that there is a high incidence of suicide, teenage pregnancy, trafficking in persons, rape, and drug use among a list of social pressures which young girls, even in their pre-teen stage of life, fall victim to, with little or no intervention from stakeholders.

Just recently, the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO) had occasion to express concern about the welfare of three young girls they had cause to rescue from the North-West District. One of the girls, a 13-year-old, was brought out of the area with her nine-day-old baby, while the other, a year younger and five months pregnant, had to be flown out.
Both of the children’s cases were taken up by the Child Care and Protection Agency, of which Ann Greene is head.

While the older of the two girls was a victim of statutory rape, the other had given a statement to the GWMO, disclosing that she and her 10-year-old sister had been trafficked by their own father, who had taken them to various mining camps and logging sites to trade sex for small bags of groceries and a little money.

GWMO President Urica Primus is deeply concerned about the welfare of the 10-year-old girl, who is still living with her father, possibly in circumstances unchanged.

The man was also accused of sexually abusing his wife soon after she had gone through a Caesarian delivery, dragging her into their yard and leaving her to bleed to death while the children watched.

With all these horror stories uppermost on her mind, Minister Lawrence told teachers at the conference, “I know that your challenge is compounded by geographical factors and language barriers, but I will urge you to be relentless in your efforts to develop awareness of the social traps into which our youths can be enmeshed.”

She further charged all teachers not to wait until something serious happens before taking action, but to develop strategies and involve youths at all levels in fighting those social giants before they take our society down.

Minister Lawrence also urged teachers to use their classrooms as another forum through which to sensitise youths on major social challenges.

“We cannot lose sight of our responsibility to prepare our students for the outer world, their immediate environs and the society at large,” she said, adding: “In this era of globalisation, we don’t want our youths to be ignorant of the viciousness of our society; of the dangers which are lurking around the corner.

“We have to initiate the discussion, making them aware of the challenges they may encounter and ways of dealing with them. We would be defeating the purpose of moulding and nurturing the child if we sidestep the issues above and pretend they do not concern us.”

With society having to grapple with innumerable and sensitive challenges and the high prevalence of dysfunctional families, Minister Lawrence said, it is lamentable that some of these issues go unnoticed by a large section of our nation; and teachers have a responsibility, as instruction providers, to create effective mediums of communication to develop awareness among young people.

“We cannot leave the task to the family, for, in some instances, it is dysfunctional; the family atmosphere is wrought with crises of one kind or another, and offers no support,” Minister Lawrence said.

“The onus is on us, as providers of instruction and resource personnel, to ensure — through our classroom discussions, through debates, through peer-group interventions and dramatic interpretations — that these issues are aired,” she added.

Though responsibilities are already heavy on the educators, who are “tasked with the academic pursuits of your young charges, which through no fault of your own are time-consuming because of the extent of the curriculum,” it is crucial that they provide guidance and training for students.

She said the days are gone when students could not have discussed certain issues in school, since with “the advent of television, the social media have changed the way we do things and the way we think. Our society is much bolder and vicious, and you and I who are on social media know that there is no restraint; we can share people’s entire life story on the social network, we can meet individuals from every echelon of society — good, bad or indifferent.”

With that in mind, Minister Lawrence told the forum that academic and social clubs in schools can be mediums for sensitising audiences on ways of dealing with challenges which confront youths.

“We must provide them with the opportunity to brainstorm, to interact with others and commit themselves to spreading the message. We can encourage members of those clubs to include the social issues, and in this way we can begin to make inroads, to sensitise and to offer ways of dealing with issues as they arise.”

Leadership training should also be extended to youth, church and community groups, which should be actively involved in stemming the tide of overwhelming issues, since government needs the “input and commitment of all.”