Some 24 youth leaders from various organisations throughout Anguilla attended a one-day Leadership Training Workshop on Wednesday this week at the Community College Development Unit.

Workshop Participants

Permanent Secretary, Mrs. Chanelle Petty-Barrett, commended the Department of Youth and Culture and the Anguilla National Youth Council for taking the time and initiative to hold the workshop, and the participants for attending.

“As leaders and persons engaged in youth organisations, your jobs are getting tougher and tougher because young people are being pulled in so many different directions,” she told them. “They have so many different challenges to face that you have to be not just a good leader, but an excellent leader to pull them in the right direction.”

Mrs. Petty-Barrett stated that it should be realised that today’s young people were growing up in a vastly different world and there were both positives and negatives. “The positive is that young people have so many opportunities available to them that they can be anything that they want to be if they use those opportunities wisely. The negative is that they are exposed to so many things that can easily distract them and lead them down the wrong path.”

She gave this advice to the leaders: “The challenge to you as Youth Leaders is that with all things going on around them, you cannot just have an organisation and expect young people to just come and join. You have to have a strategy to attract young people into your organisation. That means that your organisation has to appeal to them, be vibrant and active and doing things that keep their interest and to give them a voice…”

President of the Anguilla National Youth Council, Kasseem Forde, gave a rundown of the body’s aims and objectives and its plans for the future, among other matters.

The workshop had as its Chairperson Hyacinth Augustine, Programme Officer for Youth in the Department of Youth and Culture. Trainers for the Leadership Workshop were Vanburn Brookes (Effective Communication); Colwayne Pickering (Marketing and Promotion); Keria Hughes (Animation Exercises); Ijahnya Christian (Fundraising) and J. Niles (Evaluation).

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