The Mountain Pine Ridge Youth Challenge Program

On the Phone: Kevin Cadle

Swan was working on preparing a facility in Cayo which will be the location for the Mountain Pine Ridge Youth Challenge Program being implemented as a crime fighting tool. D.Y.S. Director Kevin Cadle explains.

On the Phone: Kevin Cadle, Director, Department of Youth Services

“We have been successful with the LIU, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Transport, in ensuring that our young people in Belize City have been actually on a lull in terms of crime and violence and we recognise that there has been a spurt of violence in our city. And so in Belize City alone, we are taking seventy-five of those young men between the ages of fourteen and seventeen at the facility to be there for a period of two years. One year they will be there to be able to learn about their behaviour and modify their behaviour, learn about skills training and then the following year, they will be doing apprenticeship and will be deployed to various government uniform institutions such as the [Belize] Police Department, the B.D.F., [Belize] Coast Guard, Forestry and Agricultural Department. So that’s the plan and all of this encompass what the Caribbean is encompassed in the youth men’s training program.”