Sean Nero

Vol­un­teerism among the na­tion's youth is crit­i­cal in the process of nur­tur­ing a sense of car­ing, giv­ing and pride says San­dra Jones, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Gen­der Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment.

Through their in­volve­ment in mean­ing­ful vol­un­teer projects, she said, young peo­ple con­tribute not on­ly to per­son­al growth, but that of their com­mu­ni­ty as well as na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. She was speak­ing at the Na­tion­al Youth Awards 2012 held at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad in Port-of-Spain, last month.

"The Na­tion­al Youth Awards were con­cep­tu­alised with the main goal of show­cas­ing and re­ward­ing ex­cel­lence in our na­tion's youth. "These awards demon­strate the min­istry's com­mit­ment to youth de­vel­op­ment as we ful­fil our man­date to lead in the de­vel­op­ment of the hu­man cap­i­tal or our na­tion in a man­ner that har­ness the in­nate po­ten­tial of all cit­i­zens," Jones said. Awards were pre­sent­ed in cat­e­gories such as busi­ness, en­tre­pre­neur­ship and in­no­va­tion, sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, ed­u­ca­tion, ICT max­imi­sa­tion, lead­er­ship, spe­cial cir­cum­stances, per­form­ing arts, vi­su­al arts and lead­er­ship.