The Rotary Club of Barbados believes that every child needs a champion and has been the children’s champion for over 60 years. The Club believes in developing the next generation of leaders and our many programs help younger leaders build leadership skills, expand education, and learn the value of service.
These programmes span across Early Act for Primary aged children, Interact for secondary school children and Rotaract Clubs for the tertiary level and young professionals. Most recently the Club launched two (2) new youth intervention programmes “Building the Brand called You”, which focuses on supplying much-needed financial, human resource, presentation and digital literacy skills for school leavers. So far, the Club has had over 54 sessions across the island’s secondary schools. But equally, the Club saw the need to support at-risk youth and launched the Y.E.S Programme (“Youth Elevation Scheme”) which is a collaboration with the Barbados Police Service Juvenile Liaison Scheme.
At the recent Graduation and Recognition Ceremony, President Tracey Knight-Lloyd in her opening remarks stated “there is a plethora of empirical data which indicates that positive youth development is directly correlated to targeted youth programmes which can include conflict resolution and violence prevention, bullying prevention, Mentoring, Afterschool recreation and sporting activities, Community Intervention programmes, Interpersonal skills training, Behavioral Programmes and parent Training among others.
She further stated that the most recent cohort of the Y.E.S. Programme consisted of 39 children and ran for ten (10) Saturdays from Oct 1 to Dec 3 with this term’s theme being ‘Core Values’. The main objective was to reinforce core values that hold society together, such as a sense of self, honesty, integrity, love, respect, discipline, good manners, caring for others, and responsibility.
The children benefitted from several sessions which covered conflict resolution, teamwork, communication, values, and integrity, building confidence, a tour to the Nature Fun Ranch and so much more.
The children benefitted from several sessions which covered conflict resolution, teamwork, communication, values, and integrity, building confidence, a tour to the Nature Fun Ranch and so much more.
Minister Corey Lane in his featured address stated that he could see the power in the programme also its importance to the country at this time. He further congratulated the Barbados Police Services, The Juvenile Liaison Scheme and Rotary Club of Barbados on their partnership to tackle crime. He stated that to bring about empowerment, each one of us must sign up for duty every single day, it cannot be left alone to one entity or one person. It must be the service organisations, it must be the police force, it must be the private sector, it must be the parents, it must be you the young people taking personal responsibility.
Several awards and prizes were also presented to the YES participants including Most Improved, Outstanding Participant, Excellent Attendance and Punctuality.
The 2nd cohort of the programme started on March 4th, 2023 under the theme “Confident Me”
