Shal­iza Has­sanali

A work­shop ti­tled Bring­ing up Boys and Girls to Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty has shown that par­ents and chil­dren need to es­tab­lish a deep­er and clos­er bond, as well a spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion with God for so­ci­ety's de­vel­op­ment.

Or­gan­ised by the Women Work­ing for So­cial Progress (Work­ing Women), the work­shop, which was held at Cap­i­tal Plaza, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day, at­tract­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from sev­er­al non-gov­ern­men­tal groups such as the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union and Cafra and in­clud­ing co-or­di­na­tor for Net­work of NGOs for the Ad­vance­ment of Women Hazel Brown, and Leela Ramdeen, chair of the Catholic Com­mis­sion for So­cial Jus­tice, to dis­cuss how par­ents should raise chil­dren for pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment.

The small group of par­tic­i­pants were di­vid­ed in­to groups and asked by fa­cil­i­ta­tors Rowe­na Kalloo and Josanne Cox, Work­ing Women's mem­bers, what prac­tices can par­ents demon­strate for pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment. The par­tic­i­pants agreed that while par­ents need­ed to com­mu­ni­cate more with chil­dren and teenagers, build­ing God in their lives was an­oth­er key fac­tor.

"We need to spend time in your child's life. As par­ents we al­so need to lead by ex­am­ple," was Wen­dell Grant's sug­ges­tion, a sin­gle par­ent for the past 16 years. Grant said he al­so al­lowed his chil­dren to have free­dom of ex­pres­sion. The par­tic­i­pants con­curred that chil­dren should face con­se­quences, be giv­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and a strong ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground.

In her con­tri­bu­tion, Ramdeen said what she no­ticed that some boys did not live in a sta­ble homes and this can some­times be a recipe for dis­as­ter.