3rd annual Police Force Youth Camp concludes

A six-day camp, which was a collaboration of the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Association of Women Police, came to a formal close on Friday.

Some of the items the students made during the camp
Some of the items the students made during the camp

This year’s camp, hosted in Madewini, Linden Hifgway, under the theme “Developing Youths through Community Projects, Discipline and Team Work”, was open to students between the ages of nine and 14 and reported a record number of a 117 participants.
The camp‘s main aim was to expose its attendees to various skills they could use later in life. These included floral and fruit arrangements, woodworking, tie dying, thread-work, sewing of school uniforms and more.
In addition to this, the campers were privy to lectures on a wide variety of pertinent topics such as drug abuse, career opportunities and education.
Camp Mother, Davis, praised the camp as it allowed youths from different social backgrounds to intermingle, with “the common denominator of discipline”. She wanted to impress upon the children the importance of this attribute, reminding them that, “if you do not have discipline, then you cannot have a proper way of life”.
Assistant Commissioner of Operations, Christopher Griffith, feature speaker of the closing ceremony, expressed elation at the high number of participants as he believed the skills they had learned would be “integral in [their] futures and the futures of others.”
Griffith went on to charge the youths to reflect frequently on their time at the camp, and to the greatest possible extent, share their newfound knowledge with their peers. He referred to the children as, “heroes whose glory is yet to be foretold”, and in closing, he asked his heroes to continue working diligently, and encouraged them to “never give up”.
The camp had a strong undercurrent of instilling national pride as well, which was quite notable as the attendees proudly sang their camp song “Let’s all come together to make Guyana safer/ by obeying the laws of this country/ to make our people happy, happy and free.”
The happy youngsters will spend one more night at the campsite before returning home.

Relatives of students who attended the camp proudly viewing the items that were made during the six-day event
Relatives of students who attended the camp proudly viewing the items that were made during the six-day event