RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter
rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Re­li­gious lead­ers have raised con­cerns over the wan­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion of youths, es­pe­cial­ly sec­ondary school stu­dents, in em­pow­er­ment ini­tia­tives. They say al­though there are pro­grammes at church­es, mosques and tem­ples, young peo­ple seem re­luc­tant to par­tic­i­pate.

Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don ac­knowl­edged the dip in en­gage­ment lev­els. 

“Youth en­gage­ment to­day has been more of a chal­lenge than it was five, ten years ago. We’re liv­ing in an at­ten­tion econ­o­my, and every­thing is grab­bing the at­ten­tion of every­one, not just young peo­ple, but every­body,” he said.

“Young peo­ple al­so have a fair­ly full sched­ule be­tween their school and ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Gor­don said the RC church has been proac­tive in pro­mot­ing pro­grammes for youth de­vel­op­ment.

“We have the con­fir­ma­tion pro­gramme and we al­so en­gage the youths out­side of the church­es at the var­i­ous homes. We al­so start­ed a spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion school to help youths find their way in­to a pro­duc­tive lifestyle. We have 118 schools, and we will be en­gag­ing youths in all ways,” he said.

Point­ing out the ac­tive in­volve­ment of young peo­ple in schools, he added: “We are com­mit­ted to mov­ing young peo­ple to lead­er­ship, mov­ing them to dis­ci­pline.”

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad Mus­lim League (TML) Farouk Khan blamed de­clin­ing youth par­tic­i­pa­tion on the dig­i­tal age, so­ci­etal pres­sures and un­sta­ble fam­i­ly struc­tures. 

“We do have some pro­grammes to at­tract youths, how­ev­er, it is dif­fi­cult to at­tract the youths, es­pe­cial­ly these sec­ondary school ones. They are al­ways busy with ex­ams. Too many dis­trac­tions with the cell phone and the com­put­er, so they don’t have time to in­ter­act,” he said.

Khan said sports is a suc­cess­ful en­gage­ment tool and that re­li­gious dis­il­lu­sion­ment wasn’t at play with­in the TML.
 “Low in­volve­ment is a whole com­bi­na­tion of peer pres­sure, me­dia pres­sure, and let’s say the tech­no­log­i­cal age where the de­vices oc­cu­py their time,” he ex­plained.

He al­so high­light­ed the ad­ver­si­ties faced by sin­gle-par­ent fam­i­lies, pre­dom­i­nant­ly man­aged by work­ing moth­ers, which hin­der youth par­tic­i­pa­tion in church ac­tiv­i­ties.

“The chil­dren are just alone at home, some left to care for the younger chil­dren. This is why they are un­able to join the youth ac­tiv­i­ties. This is a world­wide sce­nario, not on­ly in Trinidad,” he ex­plained.

Khan called for co-op­er­a­tion from all re­li­gious bod­ies to save young peo­ple.

Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin from the Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist Church said he had ob­served a drop in youth pro­gramme at­ten­dance de­spite ag­gres­sive out­reach ef­forts.

“We have gone on a strong mar­ket­ing cam­paign to at­tract teenagers be­tween 11 and 16 to the Pathfind­er pro­gramme. It’s al­most like a Boy Scouts pro­gramme but of course, it has a strong spir­i­tu­al com­po­nent and val­ue-based com­po­nent,” he said.

Dot­tin out­lined the church’s com­pre­hen­sive strat­e­gy, from ca­reer guid­ance to di­rect in­ter­ven­tion in schools, aimed at steer­ing young peo­ple away from neg­a­tive in­flu­ences and to­wards con­struc­tive en­gage­ment.
 “We are go­ing in­to the schools. We are of­fer­ing that pro­gramme to any prin­ci­pal and any dean of dis­ci­pline in terms of mov­ing in­to trou­bled ar­eas, in­clud­ing the schools. The third thing is that we are al­so hav­ing a re­vival of the vo­ca­tion by the school pro­gram, which we were well known for in the sum­mer,” he said.

Dot­tin agreed that there must be fam­i­ly sup­port to steer young peo­ple on the right path.