GG Hails Support for Youth Consultative Conferences

Governor-General, His Excellency, the Most Hon. Sir Patrick Allen, has lauded the significant stakeholder support that facilitated this year’s I Believe Initiative (IBI) Youth Consultative Conferences (YCC).

The three conferences, under the theme: ‘Youth: The World in Your Hands,’ were held in the counties of Cornwall, Middlesex, and Surrey, and saw young people being engaged on a range of issues related to their all-round development.

Speaking recently at the Surrey conference in Port Antonio, Portland, which concluded the 2015 series, the Governor-General commended the various parish planning committees which, he said, “worked so assiduously” with the respective custodes in staging the events.

He also highlighted the inputs of several agencies and organisations, such as the National Council on Drug Abuse (NCDA); Junior Achievement Jamaica (JAJ); Digicel; and National Integrity Action (NIA).

“Your involvement is a clear indication that partnership, backed by tremendous effort, can only achieve positive results,” he stated.

He told the young people that the conferences, which began approximately eight years ago, as the Youth Consultative Committees under his predecessor, the Most Hon. Professor Sir Kenneth Hall, are intended to prepare young people to take charge of their future.

“We are aware that you (young people) are at the stage in your life where you are pondering decisions that will, no doubt, affect your future. (As such) these conferences were, essentially, created to help (you to) prepare for the future…and have been arranged to encourage you to commit to a standard of excellence in all your endeavours,” he noted.

Additionally, the Governor-General said the presentations and discussions were intended to “motivate you to continue to believe in yourselves and to commit…to using what is right with Jamaica to fix what is wrong with Jamaica.”

Executive Director of NIA, Professor Trevor Munroe, who also spoke at the Surrey conference, commended the staging, pointing out that the young people’s participation “gives us, the older generation, more encouragement to understand that the future of our country is in good hands.

He expressed the hope that the events will “continue into the indefinite future.”

For his part, Custos Rotulorum for Portland, Hon. Lincoln Thaxter, said he anticipated that the conference deliberations will provide the participants with “a different vision that will propel you to make and continue to make a tremendous difference to your country.”