Barbados (Barbados Today) – Minister of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment, Dwight Sutherland, is encouraging Barbadians to fully embrace their heritage, pride, and their level of respect with each other, even during these testing times.
His comments were made on Sunday at the Community Independence Celebrations Secretariat’s Church Service, at Dunamis Outreach Ministries.
Minister Sutherland said Barbadians should always embrace their national identity and their culture, and though the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment has done a lot over the years to the youth reach their best potential, more must be done at large as a society, if Barbados is ever to curb the number of young people committing crimes.
“I want us to go out there as partners within the Ministry of Youth, Sports and Community Empowerment, [because] youth development is national development, and national development is youth development. We have a role to play, in bringing back some respectability in our society among our young people.”
He continued, “As we look around, and go to the prison, as we drive around … we have a challenge in this society. A challenge of violence, a challenge of deviant behaviour, and it is pervasive among that grouping between the ages of 15 to 35, and those occupy a large space at Dodds Prison. We have a role to play within this Ministry to bring back respectability to our society,” he said.
