Will Killing of Gabourel Trigger Necessary Intervention

Executive Director Nicholas says that as a society, we are reactive and not proactive enough. But will the unfortunate killing of Dwayne Gabourel trigger the necessary changes and interventions at all levels – community and policy level?

Margaret Nicholas

Margaret Nicholas, Executive Director, NCFC

 “The killing of Dwayne may really and truly propel us to do something rather than just calling for action, but actually do something. I personally think that it is a collective responsibility because I know sometime there is the blame game where we say it is the parents to be blamed, it is the police, it is the system, it’s government – but it is all of us; we have a collective responsibility. At the NCFC, we have been advocating and even before I joined the NCFC, we have been advocating for several things and it really and truly would take the will of all of us for it to happen. We also have to recognise that a lot of people are out there earning monies and taking money to the table. This gives them a different level of power and if our young people, the role models that they are seeing appears to be very powerful, able to kill, able to acquire great amounts of money through drug abuse or whatever they do, selling or whatever, then that speaks volume to children, particularly our boys. We have a number of boys who have grown up in single houses who have been raised up to take on their responsibility in our society and then you have those who are just left out there. We have siblings who are on their own and our own environments sometimes dictate how we behave. It’s a huge job so I believe the call for action has to be now. We have to look at interventions, we have to look at prevention programs and it has to be everybody’s business. We all have a collective responsibility. If not, bad as it may sound we will see more of our young people dying.”