CHIEF Officer of the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) Social Sector Division, Diedre Carrington, has highlighted that the bank will be developing its first Youth Policy and Operational Strategy, as part of efforts to direct more focus to youth in the Region.

“We are in the process of developing the Youth Policy and Operational Strategy- known to us as YPOS,” Carrington told the Guyana Chronicle.

“As a precursor to this strategy, we will be channelling greater investments into our youth innovation and empowerment programming and importantly, building on the outcomes of the Caribbean forum on population, youth and development [held in 2018],” Carrington said at a recent Caribbean Youth forum held in Guyana.

According to her, youth mainstreaming and crime prevention will feature prominently in this policy that is expected to be presented to the CDB’s Board of Directors before the end of 2019.

There are three stages to the development of this policy: fact-finding, in-country work and actually developing the strategy.

“In fact-finding, we are doing a lot of desk research and discussing with our borrowing member countries and our partner agencies the types of programmes and projects implemented in the countries,” she explained. “The idea is to do an assessment of what has been done and to learn lessons, because it does not make sense to move forward without knowing what we have done in the past and learn lessons from those.”

For the second phases, four countries have been identified as pilot countries; these are: St. Kitts and Nevis, the British Virgin Islands, Belize and Suriname.

In these countries, Carrington explained that more data will be collected and intersections of young people will be consulted alongside government and partner agencies.

“We are bringing together– in a regional consultation– our youth leaders and actors and the idea is to validate the data that we would have collected and then present them with a draft of the policy and get their feedback and guidance,” the CDB’s Chief Officer said.

Further, she contended: “The approach that we are taking is a very youth-centred one,” and noted that efforts have been made to reach out to young people through social media and at events such as the youth summit.

Through groundwork already engaged in, she disclosed that young people have been calling for more interventions in education, employment and peace-building.

Specifically on peace-building, the chief officer said that crime and violence must be tackled throughout the Caribbean to promote a better living environment.

“We see crime and violence as being anti-development; if we don’t deal with that issue it means that we are continuing to spend resources on dealing with a problem than trying to prevent it,” Carrington said.

“We have always focused on youth development, but it has not been in that central way,” she said. But now, with the policy, it is expected that youth development will play a central role in the bank’s developmental effort throughout the Region.

Additionally, she also indicated that all of the CDB’s borrowing countries are very keen on this policy and are looking forward to the final product.

“We have tried to take a role that is preventative. In building our school system we are looking at how we can build and promote peace, how can we promote better dialogue [and] better negotiating without violence, working with Parent Teacher Associations… we recognise that we need interventions at various levels,” she related. This policy will now seek to guide interventions at these various levels.