National Youth Policy of Barbados.

The Commonwealth Youth Programme (CYP) advocated that a National Youth Policy must begin with a vision of youth that expresses faith in the future, especially by young people. During the process of gathering data for the National Youth Policy, a structured mechanism was sought to enable young people to discuss youth issues and to make recommendations on how best to address them. From the beginning it was realized that using traditional methods of consulting young men and women on an ad hoc basis would confirm the suspicion that young people were still not being considered as serious partners in national development. It was therefore decided that if the National Youth Policy of Barbados was to do justice to the modern challenges facing young people in a rapidly changing environment then there needed to be a national platform on which young people could, on a regular basis, express their views, participate in the process of making decisions that affect their lives and showcase their talents. This need became more pressing in the contemporary climate of near-hysteria about the deviant behaviour of a small segment of the youth population. With respect to the country’s flagship industry, tourism, it recognized that immediate action was necessary to expand and diversify the tourism product with focus on the development of special areas, market expansion and airlift. In agriculture, emphasis would be placed on greater use of technology in an effort to put land resources to good use, to save foreign exchange, and ensure food security. The energy, sector would be targeted for the advancement of alternative sources of energy such as wind, waste matter and solar. The Policy Vision, Goals, and Objectives of contemporary youth are clearly identified under these key strategy areas for intervention: a) Employment; b) Education; c) The Family; d) Core Values; e) Gangs; f) Housing; g) Lifestyle Diseases; h) Political Participation; i) The Environment.
Strategy 1: Employment This policy will therefore encourage and support young people to become more entrepreneurial in their approach to employment. The talents and energy of young people will be channelled towards the potential growth areas of ICT’s, Sports, the Cultural Industries and Agriculture. Strategy 2: Education The Ministry of Family, Culture, Sports and Youth will therefore focus on creating extra-curricular institutions and programmes to complement what is being provided in formal educational settings. These institutions for implementing the National Youth Policy will explore and develop other learning methodologies, such as “experiential learning”. Strategy 3: This Ministry, being mindful of the dependence of the family focusing on Agriculture and use modern techniques to attract young people and use the land more productively.