THERE have been many variations of youth representative bodies in Guyana, but hardly any have survived over the years, leaving a noticeable gap for youth representation in the country for a demographic group that is regarded as the largest of our population. Young people are not a monolith and getting their representation right has been a herculean task.

Representation politics has made it almost impossible to ensure that young people are 100 per cent reflected in special interest representative bodies. This is especially true for a multicultural, multi-ethnic society such as Guyana where young people are spread across 83,000 square miles of hinterland and coastland, and where the inaccessible terrain and the digital divide concomitantly make representation difficult.

The bar on achieving peak representation in previously established youth-led initiatives had been set so unrealistically high that those bodies lost legitimacy before they even left the gate. It is easy to imagine, with youth not being a monolith, that an overwhelming amount of time would be spent on ironing out the appearance of the body, rather than focusing on actionable programmes. Resources were the other issue. But with the Presidential Youth Advisory Council, this has changed.

With funding provided through the National Assembly in Budget 2022, the body’s programmes and spending are open to scrutiny by the nation’s elected representatives. “This is not a political gimmick… the country is going to change; more importantly, it is going to transform. We get to define, however, how the country is going to transform.

“… we are going out into the communities and we are seeking the representation, and we are having the engagement and consulting, we are also building the nexus of how we are going to make those decisions so that we can define the transformation of the country,” Minister for youth, Charles Ramson Jr said during the launch of the youth council on Friday at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), Liliendaal.

The minister’s remarks, notably made on the day the rest of the world celebrates youth, must be underscored because within it, there is a message on the importance of home-grown solutions.
President Ali, in his remarks, also focused a section of his contribution on the destination of Guyanese moving collectively as a nation. For His Excellency, it is important for Guyanese to build a future that is wanted and supported by us; a future geared towards creating opportunities. “Make no mistake, you are living in a country which will be among the best, if not the best by 2030.

You will inherit a future never seen before but you will also inherit some circumstances that you have to be aware of,” President Ali told the gathering which included Cabinet Ministers, heads of the joint services, other representatives of state agencies, members of the diplomatic corps, and young people.

Guyana has longed for an institutionalised youth representative body. In his own words, the President plugged the need for institutions, mechanisms and systems which support the holistic development of people and country. Over the years, civil society organisations have largely operated through external funding sources. While these have been important for bridging large social gaps, these local organisations are sometimes left bare and withered as those external funding sources dry up, and the very communities where the interventions were implemented sometimes revert to pre-intervention cultures because of lacking sustainability and succession planning.

The President’s Youth Advisory Council will not fall mercy to that bind, nor will the young people of Guyana who are the first and only agenda for this advisory body. This is about the well-being of our nation’s future, physically embodied in young people.

Some of the council members have already taken up their seats, extracted from a wide cross-section of Guyanese youth. For President Ali, this council is about ensuring young people, in the spirit of Article 13 of Guyana’s Constitution, are well and integrally involved in the decision-making of their country, and are actively engaged in solving problems faced by youths of the country. “It is active participation in the actual programming and policy-making of our country,” the President said. Within the next 30 days, as indicated at the launch, President, Dr Irfaan Ali will announce the other members of the council.

Representative politics has been quite a difficult undertaking because it is hardly possible to ensure every group is represented in governance. But the core mandate of young people’s well-being is what also matters in this intervention. For the first time in Guyana’s history, there is synergy between the Executive and the Legislature that a youth representative body for Guyana is necessary and this is what has been achieved. Now, the work begins.