Richard Lord

Gov­ern­ment is mov­ing to es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Youth Vol­un­teerism Pro­gramme to en­cour­age young peo­ple to be more car­ing and less in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic. This was re­vealed by Gen­der Af­fairs, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Ver­na St Rose-Greaves dur­ing yes­ter­day's post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's. St Rose-Greaves said the ini­tia­tive was be­ing im­ple­ment­ed joint­ly with civ­il so­ci­ety groups in T&T. She said it seeks to nur­ture a sense of be­ing or­gan­ised in youths, of car­ing and to move away from be­ing "in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic."

She said it would have a sig­nif­i­cant and pos­i­tive im­pact on young peo­ple and will en­cour­age them to par­tic­i­pate in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and na­tion­al de­ci­sion-mak­ing. She said non-fi­nan­cial re­wards would be giv­en to par­tic­i­pants dur­ing the pro­gramme. St Rose-Greaves said the pro­gramme would in­volve stu­dents from pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary, ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions and youth camps. Mean­while, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz, al­so spoke at the news con­fer­ence. He said the Gov­ern­ment was about to es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Cor­po­rate So­cial Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR) pro­gramme. He said the project, to cost just un­der $2 mil­lion, was be­ing fund­ed in the main by the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (UNDP).

Cadiz said the na­tion­al cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is a con­tin­u­ing com­mit­ment by busi­ness en­ti­ties to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing in a man­ner that meets or ex­ceeds the eth­i­cal, le­gal, com­mer­cial and pub­lic ex­pec­ta­tions that so­ci­ety has of the pri­vate sec­tor. Cadiz said the Gov­ern­ment was us­ing CSR as an­oth­er tool in at­tract­ing for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment . Both Cadiz and St Rose-Greaves said they main­tain the ob­jec­tion to the re­sump­tion of hang­ings in T&T. St Rose-Greaves said if and when leg­is­la­tion is put to a vote in the Sen­ate her po­si­tion would be known. She in­sist­ed how­ev­er that she re­mains against it. Cadiz said de­spite his ob­jec­tion he re­mained com­mit­ted to the Prime Min­is­ter and would ex­er­cise col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when his vote is re­quired on the mat­ter.