Strategic parenting programme to be implemented – Youth Director

Director of Youth Melissa Carmichael on Wednesday revealed that the Department of Youth will soon launch a strategic parenting programme geared at assisting parents to better handle young delinquents.
Speaking at a sensitisation programme hosted by the Department of Social Cohesion, Culture, Youth and Sport at the Mayor and City Council (M&CC), Carmichael made the disclosure when questioned by a Councillor regarding her department’s works for parents.
“We have to cause some amount of paradigm shift in the families themselves so we have decided to have a strategic parenting programme for the communities that we will be interacting with,” the Director revealed.
According to Carmichael, strong families lead to stronger communities and nations; and as such, programmes are expected to be rolled out to reach young people and target social ills.
“We will work first through the [Parent Teacher Associations] PTAs and then we will work through the communities as well… we are already working in that regard, we will be rolling out with our programme to reach young people and social ills a programme for our parents… We believe that strong families leads to strong youths with leads to strong communities and in turn leads to strong and productive nations, so I can tell you that recommendations have been heard,” she stated.
Further, following the revelation of over 400 children in Guyana being abused and the woes in Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam) of the high rate of alcoholism among youths there, Carmichael revealed that several discussions were had in that regard and recommendations were made for the launching of programmes to rectify those issues.
“We are very much aware of these issues and I can tell you that only yesterday my staff and I met and while we are in schools and we are in communities, we believe that because there is an increase and because drugs seem to be very popular, we believe that a more strategic plan needs to be put in place, so I can tell you that we will be launching a programme that focuses specifically on a couple of issues affecting our young people,” she explained.
Present at the sensitisation programme hosted for Councillors, Mayor of Georgetown, Ubraj Narine in his brief remarks applauded same and called for the initiative to continue.
“We are grateful to have this kind of department, so on behalf of the Mayor and City Council, I want to express my sincere gratitude for this being on the agenda of the Department of Youth Sport and Culture” Narine said.
The objective of the event was to provide stakeholders with information on the work of the Social Cohesion Department, to assist participations to better understand social cohesion as an approach to communities and national development and to enable participants to examine their own roles in promoting a harmonious Guyana.