Regional Students’ Movement expected by October 2011

A Regional Students’ Movement is expected by October next year, a necessity determined at the first ever Regional Student Leaders round table which ended Friday last. Organised by the Commonwealth Youth Programme (CYP) Caribbean Centre and the University of Guyana (UG), the round table saw participants from 18 Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean, as well as Canada and Belize in Central America, and ended on a very positive note.
A communiqué coming out of the interactive session indicated that a draft proposal for a Regional Students’ Movement is in the works.
The three-day activity opened Wednesday at the Education Lecture Theatre at the University of Guyana (UG).
The participants addressed the dimensions of effective student youth movements, shaping the future, assessments of the youth movements’ challenges, the promotion of positive social change, forging partnerships, and re-organizing strategies for general improvements.
They agreed to several targets to get the Regional Students’ Movement functional.
Among these were securing the buy-in by February 2011; forming a committee to work on a constitution for the Movement by March 2011; having a draft ready to be ratified in September 2011; and appointing council members and an executive by October 2011.
According to the communiqué ,the projected aim is to “produce affirmative young leaders with the capacity to function in a professionally demanding environment.”
The participants agreed that this move will strengthen the Region’s human resource capacity and, with key strategizing, formulate long term regional networks with stakeholders at all levels of governance.   

Common Concerns
Additionally, the communiqué pointed out that a students’ movement structure was developed after addressing the common needs of existing movements in the region.
As individual bodies, some of the common challenges highlighted were capacity deficiencies, lack of knowledge on students’ rights and responsibilities, inefficient communication methods to mobilize students, the nature of student executive’s work, student apathy and limited participation, and national budget cuts and their effects on annual academic programming.
The participants shared their experiences and relative best practices were agreed on.
The best practices included:
* Policy relative to compulsory training in instances where there is no avenue to utilize existing resources to address capacity deficiencies
* Adequate documentation and publication to address lack of knowledge on students’ rights and responsibilities
* Establishing opportunities for one-on-one contact to improve communication methods to mobilize students
* Establishing expectations of administration and student government, as well as the implementation of a code of conduct to define the nature of student executive’s work
* Addressing student apathy and limited participation by incorporating social and academic programming in a strategic manner; and
* Stepping up advocacy, encouraging partnerships and initiating fund-raisers to deal with national budget cuts and their effects on annual academic programming.
The Regional Students’ Movement is expected to address these concerns in a more holistic way.
The contention of the CYP Caribbean Centre Regional Director, Henry Charles, is that organised youth movements need to step up their game in order to gain the recognition at higher levels, expressly the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
The CYP aims to empower young people to become more active and to participate in national, social, political and economic development in member countries through the areas of enterprise and entrepreneurship, development, information and communications technology initiatives, addressing social exclusion and HIV/AIDS, among other objectives.   
The CYP Caribbean Centre is located in Georgetown, and is one of four centres established to serve the member countries of the Commonwealth.
The Caribbean Centre responds to youth development for 17 English-speaking countries and territories of the Commonwealth Caribbean, and Canada, covering 18 countries with a total population of 37.6 million people.

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