Youth ac­tivists are urg­ing the gov­ern­ment to re­think its pro­grammes geared to­wards de­ter­ring young peo­ple from crime as they be­lieve the cur­rent ef­forts are fail­ing those who need in­ter­ven­tion.

Lament­ing the state of youth in­volve­ment in crime, Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings sought to as­sure the na­tion that ef­forts will con­tin­ue to en­gage youth in de­vel­op­men­tal ini­tia­tives.

How­ev­er, Shi­han Mar­va John-Lo­gan, a so­cial change and peace am­bas­sador and Mti­ma Sol­wazi, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of the ROOTS foun­da­tion, who both work ex­ten­sive­ly with young peo­ple in so-called ‘hot spot’ com­mu­ni­ties are syn­er­gised in their per­spec­tive that state pro­grammes fail to gar­ner in­put from young peo­ple who are in­volved in crime.

“Let us go to some of the stake­hold­ers that are work­ing with young peo­ple in these ar­eas, let us see if we can walk with them and don’t just shake hands with the youth, stand up and lis­ten to what they are say­ing and I think out of that it will have bet­ter co­he­sion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­cause youth crime is get­ting out of hand. They are just get­ting younger and younger and that is sad for our coun­try,” John-Lo­gan said.

Back­ing up her point is Sol­wazi who said from his ex­pe­ri­ence, that the youth and youth-cen­tred NGOs are on­ly mean­ing­ful­ly en­gaged for votes.

“I’m not sure if you know the sto­ry of how SER­VOL start­ed. Fa­ther Pan­tin went up in­to Laven­tille you know, he didn’t stay on Ox­ford Street and say let me see if I can help these peo­ple and start this thing called SER­VOL,” Sol­wazi ex­plained.

He added that of­ten when pro­grammes are launched, the aes­thet­ics tend to alien­ate the tar­get group.

“So, you come, you have a pro­gramme in the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre. And I am go­ing to pass by the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre be­cause I al­ready do not go there. They will say them old peo­ple locked down our com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre and they feel is their own, so what am I go­ing there for? So, we have to meet them where they are,” he plead­ed.

Sol­wazi said each of the so-called hot spot com­mu­ni­ties has gate­keep­ers who can act as con­duits be­tween the State and those en­gaged in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

“So, en­gage with them and make the young peo­ple feel like they’re part of so­ci­ety. We’re still not do­ing that un­less it’s our vote you want and that is the re­al­i­ty,” Sol­wazi posit­ed.

Mean­while, John-Lo­gan said while it is com­mend­able that the State has so many pro­grammes tar­get­ed to­wards youth, the ques­tion of val­ue for mon­ey aris­es.

“Who are the peo­ple they are hav­ing con­sul­ta­tions with to de­vel­op those pro­grammes? Are they peo­ple work­ing in com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed by youth crime? Be­cause if you are de­vel­op­ing a pro­gramme, you need all stake­hold­ers around the ta­ble. We can’t get every stake­hold­er but in the ar­eas that are af­fect­ed by crime and vi­o­lence, some­body in that com­mu­ni­ty should be at the ta­ble say­ing ‘Mr Fos­ter Cum­mings this is what I be­lieve my com­mu­ni­ty needs and come with me and walk and stand up and talk to the young peo­ple who are af­fect­ed by crime and vi­o­lence and the res­i­dents in the com­mu­ni­ty.’”

John-Lo­gan is al­so ques­tion­ing the process through which youth are ad­mit­ted in­to gov­ern­ment pro­grammes.

“Be­cause when you see who are sign­ing up for it, they’re not the young men in­volved in crime or the women on the streets or the ones who can’t read and write prop­er­ly. Many of the pro­grammes they will call and say get peo­ple to reg­is­ter. And I can tell you out of every ten peo­ple who get in­to these pro­grammes, ze­ro are from my com­mu­ni­ty. And that is re­al. And you can ask them to show you the stats and where the per­sons come from,” she lament­ed.

The En­ter­prise-based ac­tivist said parental in­volve­ment is al­so para­mount.

“We al­so can­not say we are go­ing to start a pro­gramme for a child and the par­ent just drops off the child and the par­ent is not in­volved. Make it manda­to­ry that at least once a month you have a rap ses­sion with the par­ents to let them al­so be part of the pro­gramme to teach them to deal with chal­lenges and to com­mu­ni­cate and build bet­ter re­la­tion­ships. We can­not tack­le crime with­out deal­ing with par­ents, ed­u­ca­tion and the eco­nom­ic as­pect of crime,” John-Lo­gan ex­plained.

John-Lo­gan said it is al­so im­por­tant to note that when fo­cus­ing on youth and crime, there must be an ac­knowl­edge­ment that their in­volve­ment is due to much larg­er forces in play.

“Crime does not stem from the ground up, crime is like rain, it falls down. So why don’t we fo­cus on plug­ging those clouds that are let­ting things drop down. All the mur­ders that are hap­pen­ing on the ground lev­el, why? What is caus­ing that?” she ques­tioned.