Govt exploring creative ways to ensure young people access opportunities – Steven Jacobs

Although young people are active across every sector in Guyana, the real challenge is ensuring they are informed about and engaged with available opportunities and, according to Minister within the Culture, Youth and Sport Ministry, Steven Jacobs, the government is now exploring more creative ways to connect with them.
The Minister made the statement during an episode of the Starting Point Podcast on Sunday while responding to questions surrounding youth engagement and awareness of opportunities available across the country.
He contended that young people are actively involved in various sectors and that the government has a wide range of youth development opportunities available to them.

According to him, the information is already available and widely shared, as young people themselves also circulate it. He noted that government ministries consistently disseminate updates on opportunities, programmes, and policies.
“We’re focused heavily on young people. If you look at the agriculture initiative that the President introduced, it brought together a whole host of youths so they can develop business models and so forth. We want them to be involved in agriculture and growing their own food. You look at Minister Keoma’s Ministry of Labour and the big programmes they are implementing there, along with the expansion of education, more schools, universal secondary education, digital learning and all of these things which are geared towards developing our young people,” he stated.
However, he said there is still a need to continue educating, guiding, and directing young people to ensure they fully engage with the information, especially in a world filled with distractions. He emphasized that providing this guidance is important to help them stay focused and benefit from available opportunities he said the challenge lies in ensuring young people are fully aware of the opportunities available to them.
“So the youth aspect of this country is really spread across each sector, but the challenge now seems to be ensuring that these young people know what’s happening and that they are actually reading and taking in all of these programmes and opportunities. We are looking at creative ways to give them information because of their short attention span, so they can really understand what we’re doing. That is why we are exploring creative ways of putting information out there… once we get the opportunity to meet a young group, whether it be in sports or voluntary service groups,” he explained.
He noted that youth conferences can play a major role in this process by bringing together young people from across Guyana for breakout sessions and direct engagement with various arms of the government.
Distractions
Meanwhile, he said that distractions play a significant role in preventing young people from fully recognizing the opportunities available to them, while noting that plans are also being developed and implemented to address this challenge.
“We can have the different ministers talk about what they’re doing in their sectors and the opportunities available. That is what we want to do in a world of distractions, and I say that again because people can be distracted very easily during this time by negative things and gossip. We want young people to really understand where this country is heading,” he added.