Diana Mahabir-Wyatt
When discussing employment issues with a human resource (HR) colleague recently, he brought up the ongoing discussion about youth violence in and out of schools.
His organisation has been asked by non-governmental organisations and community-based organisations to “do their part” in helping diminish youth violence in the community by hiring “at-risk” youths.
This will help them learn employable skills and work discipline, leading them away from a life of crime. He asked me if I thought it would work.
I was one of the founders of Servol with my old friend Gerry Pantin, back in 1960, joined shortly thereafter by Wes Hall. So, of course, I know it works.
That is what Servol has been successfully doing since the 1960s, when social unrest was even higher than it is now. So far, over 45,320 young people have been trained by Servol, and of those, less than three per cent have ever been incarcerated. Young, angry males were the ones most at risk.
With the growing emancipation of females, we are now also experiencing gangs of angry girls attacking vulnerable classmates as well.
Parents and teachers are unable to find a solution to what fuels the bitterness and anger of the young and, as my HR colleague pointed out, this makes them unsuitable for employment in even basic entry-level positions.
“In most organisations, we would like to help,” he said, “But we are a manufacturing enterprise, not a social-work institution. We can’t afford to hire more staff just to train them.” Well, you don’t know until you try, do you? If your existing staff might be willing to volunteer to take on the responsibility, it will give them new skills as well. It worked with Servol.
Demand for Servol’s trainees is oversubscribed. Over the past 20-something years, thousands of “at-risk” youngsters have passed through Servol’s doors.
Less than one per cent overall have subsequently been in trouble with the law. Does that sound different from the youth violence we read about?
When primary education has been limited and expression of ideas and activity opportunities are blocked by pre-colonial teaching methodologies – that demand silence, read-and-repeat and memorise-and-spew-back as learning methods – even the basic building blocks of learning may be crushed before students get into adolescence.
That is when they most need intellectual stimulation to motivate learning. Without it, frustration rises, and if gang crime is the only way they have to gain power or esteem, it may be the only motivating outlet available.
In secondary school, my fellow students were mainly from poor refugee families, displaced from war-torn Europe, as Latin American students coming to our shores are doing now.
They were struggling to learn the language, culture and basic economic survival skills. Children suffer from the frustration and stress of their parents – what any refugee family faces and what makes them and usually their children try harder – even changing their own family names in their desperation to be accepted. It
