SALUTATIONS!
I have always felt particular pleasure in participating in any activity that involves our young people and today is no exception. The age range makes it all the more pleasing as the competitions’ age range encompasses youngsters from eight to sixteen ensuring participation from both the primary and secondary schools in the Community.
This competition, which is part of the 30th Anniversary celebrations of the Caribbean Community, reflects the deliberate embracing of the youth by the Conference of Heads of Government who, just over a year ago, approved the programme to celebrate this Anniversary of the Caribbean Community. In so doing the leaders agreed that the overarching theme of the Celebrations would be INTEGRATION – OUR KEY TO PROSPERITY, with a special focus on Youth. The celebrations Programme is intended to sensitise persons of all walks of life, particularly young people, to the meaning of CARICOM, its implications for the people of the Region, its achievements, the challenges it faces and prospects for the future – one in which the integration process seeks to provide for us all.
In that regard the themes selected for the competitions that are about to be judged are most apt. In the primary schools category the theme is “We live in the Caribbean” and for the Secondary school students it is “What can CARICOM Mean to Me?”
Ladies and Gentlemen, in a real way it could be argued that these two themes are directly connected. For, there is little doubt that if you live in the Caribbean, CARICOM must have meaning for you as it seeks to achieve its purpose of providing a viable and sustainable society.
However there is another side to this. CARICOM, depending on how you look at it, can be merely an acronym, a treaty, a collection of agreements, or a collectivity of nation states. On the other hand it can be a living, vibrant, dynamic organism made up of people coming to give true meaning to a Caribbean Community. This would see a coming together of the citizens of the nation states that comprise CARICOM to put flesh on the bare bones of the acronym, the treaty and the collection of agreements and documents.
In that context no one has a larger role to play than the young people of the Community. It is also a fortunate coincidence of history that never before has it been as easy for people to come together to share and build as it is today. Information and communications technology has ensured that we are all more aware of each other and can exchange ideas with an ease and speed hitherto unknown.
To assist this process of knowledge and to enable the young people of our Community to be better informed about their Community in order to bring them fully on board, the Secretariat is in the final stages of preparing a comprehensive book on CARICOM for general readership, but heavily skewed towards the youth. This book is intended to provide its readership with information on the Caribbean Community – its history, achievements, challenges and future prospects. Such a publication should be looked upon as essential reading to provide our young people with a knowledge base that is common to them all in the quest to forge this viable and sustainable society that we all seek.
The combination of a body of information and the means to transmit it quickly and widely presents an ideal opportunity for us to encourage our youth to take an active part in influencing the direction and growth of the Community. In putting the ball in their hands we must also move to provide a field on which they can play and it is in that context, that we all look forward to the imminent CARICOM Single Market and Economy. Within the boundary of that CSME, this team of Caribbean people must be well equipped to compete with the rest of the hemisphere and the world.
As you look around when the pieces are put on public display, you will get a sampling of the creative juices that lie within our young people just yearning to flow out and to be channeled into a positive force for the development of the Community. It is in tapping into that force that we will be able to build the team that can hold its own on any field of play.
In closing, I want to commend the work of the young artists to you and to thank the eminent judges for taking the time to make this investment in our youth. I also wish to congratulate Ms Trotz and the Secretariat’s 30th Anniversary Celebrations Committee for their tireless efforts in ensuring that our celebrations continue to be successful.
