THE future of South Ruimveldt youths is now a bit brighter as the Women’s Empowerment Group (WEG) of the community has opened a space to conduct youth development sessions.

Volunteering themselves to strengthen the youth population of Constituency 14, WEG members will be offering free remedial classes, classes for Grade Six students preparing to write examinations, and students preparing for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC).

Speaking to the media on Tuesday, Constituency Manager, Pastor Brenda Williams, who is also a member of the WEG, said the initiative was birthed from a survey conducted in the community.

Sharing the findings from the survey, Williams said WEG members realised that a number of the persons need help, since they cannot afford a number of things for the children of the community.

The group also found that there was a high number of school dropouts and many young women at home, with children, and with no job.
This caused them to believe that an intervention should be made to address those issues within their constituency.

“We have devoted our time, and we feel like we should give back to society, especially, since we would have benefitted from the Government of Guyana and we are now in the position to help our young people. So we are going to help mould them into positive contributors in our country,” Williams said.

Giving a history of the journey to get where they are today, Williams shared that the programmes mentioned, have been ongoing for several months. However, they were not afforded a space, neither was there any support system to sustain their efforts. This was a hindering factor to the results they wanted.

However, after expressing the need to expand their efforts to the business community, Food for the Poor and influential persons within the government, the group received the necessary support, to get a wider reach and greater impact.

The two-storied space given to them was donated by Continental Group of Companies and is located at the Shopping Plaza in South Ruimveldt.

EXPANSION

With the new space, the programmes have extended significantly. The group also managed to secure the support of EGOV, which donated eight laptop computers to the programme and also provides free Internet access in the building.
This, Williams said, will be used by students of the community to do their research for assignments and so on.

“We know that they (students) would need to do research, fourth formers especially, to do their SBAs and common entrance students. So with this contribution, they can come and do research, free of cost,” she said.

In addition to using the computers for research, there will also be computer classes for the youths, to make them computer literate.

“We are also going into some traditional areas: knitting, tie-dye, cosmetology (hair and nails), cake decorating, floral arrangement and so on. And there are more for the older ones with whom we want to provide an opportunity for them to learn a trade, that they can use to earn an income,” Williams added.

Among the resource persons who would have volunteered their services to helping the young people in the various areas are, Ann Greene, Ministry of Social Protection; Anna Howard; Maria Gentle; Sandra Adams; and Sharon Benn.
There is also the idea of having a counsellor available to handle social issues, she said.

Councillor of Constituency 14, Denroy Tudor, who is also a member of the group, said though it was a South Ruimveldt initiative, an invitation has been extended to youths of East and West Ruimveldt, to use the facility as well.

“This is going to be a centre that is people-friendly and focused on empowering our young people. I believe as time progresses, we will be able to bring it to a standard that, every single constituency within Georgetown will have something similar. The government’s agenda at the end of the day is to ensure that young people are connected through technology because we are an advancing country and we are sitting on the cusp of being one of the largest oil producing countries,” Tudor posited.

He added: “So this is just simply a start, in terms of uplifting and enriching the standard that we have within Constituency 14.”