CYDP launches programme on sexual health issues
In a positive effort to occupy the youths and keep them away from crime, the Conscious Youth Development Programme and the Community Policing Unit teamed up with the Yabra Community Policing Centre to hold the first in a series of youth sessions. Today’s event had the participation of teenage girls and primary school boys from James Garbutt Seventh Day Adventist School. Together they sat down to learn sexual and reproductive health issues. The Community Policing Unit hopes to build a close-knit community among the youths.
Douglas Hyde, Youth Program Coordinator, Community Policing Unit
“One of the goals is to utilize these young persons and persons who participate in these sessions afterwards by letting them be peer educators. So they will go back and share the information to their friends or their families and the facilitator who is from the Ministry of Health will help us in terms to better empower these young persons upon that scale; how to impart these information that they learned today to others.”
Marion Ali
“I see that the participants are mainly young ladies and primary school children. Is that the group that you intended to target? At the end of the day the society is what it is because of the trouble makers in the streets. I don’t see those hard core criminals here.”
Douglas Hyde
“One of the goals of the Community Policing Unit is to reach that younger age of young people. We’ve did a study and research and we realise that the younger the young persons are right now, those are the target both the violence and crime are attacking. So by doing this, it’s a proactive move by educating them early in their lives. You don’t want to wait until they’ve gotten older and we see the side effects of not educating them earlier. This is part of that proactive move; empowering them and educating them early in her lives”
Gerald Sanchez, Student, James Garbutt Primary
“Yoh could prepare yuhself inna life so no danger no harm yoh nor nothing inna life.”
Marion Ali
“So how you wah ker back what you learned to the rest ah your classmates?”
Gerald Sanchez
“I wah ker it back when dehn ask me questions bout dis inna class. I wah tell dehn whatever happen and those things; how fi protect yuhself inna life, how fi mek yoh no ketch HIV and those things.”
Marion Ali
“And how fi fight crime?”
Gerald Sanchez
“Yes ma’am.”
Gilbert Ramirez, Student, James Garbutt Primary
“About AIDS and proper respect and that the girls must know how when they are ready they could got their child and pregnancy.”
Marion Ali
“You also learned a little nit about health and blood pressure right?”
Gilbert Ramirez
“Yeah, that blood pressure is ninety to sixty and one hundred and twenty and eighty.”
Marion Ali
“That’s normal?”
Gilbert Ramirez
“Normal to me.”
Fourth Form Graduate
“My aunt recommended me to come and I though it would be great to know all the information they are giving out today.”
Marion Ali
“Did you learn anything new?”
Fourth Form Student
“Actually, yes; maternity mortality. I did actually know about females dying during pregnancy or during labour but the name was something new to me.”
Hyde says they plan to hold similar sessions in crime prone neighborhoods in Belize City and hopes that youths from these communities will be encouraged to participate.
