Speech

Keynote Address by Karen Hilliard at the Caribbean Hall of Fame Awards June 2009

As prepared

Kingston, Jamaica | Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Masters of ceremonies, His Worship the Mayor Desmond McKenzie; Mr. Garnett Reid, Executive Director of the Caribbean Development for the Arts, Sports and Culture Foundation; awardees and other special guests; ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

The great Cuban poet Jose Marti once said, “Honrar, honra”.  Loosely translated, it means that when you honor others, you bring honor to yourself.   And so it is an honor for me to join the sponsors and organizers of this event tonight in honoring people who have excelled in the fields of music, sports and the arts in the region. All the awardees have different talents but they share one thing in common, and that is passion for what they do—a passion that, by some alchemy, they blended with discipline and hard work to yield great achievements. Congratulations to you all.

The organization that I represent also has a passion. We are passionate about development in the Caribbean and particularly development right here in Jamaica.

The Caribbean region offers remarkable human potential. The awardees here tonight are examples of this. This region; however, faces some unique challenges. At the same time, the global economic crisis has made it harder for traditional actors, including governments, to confront these challenges.

Caribbean youth in particular are at risk of not achieving their full potential. There is a concerning uptrend of youth engagement in illegal activity. Research suggests that young people, especially young males, are the main victims and the main perpetrators of crime. The highest rate of growth of HIV transmission occurs among youth aged 10 to 19. This is compounded by increasing challenges for youth employability, as we continue to hear of a stark future that awaits them in a constricted job market.

A 2008 World Bank report states that at-risk youth comprise half of the total population between the ages of 12 to 24 in the Latin America and Caribbean region. The LAC region has the world’s highest homicide rate among males between the ages of 15 and 29 (69 per 100,000). Young people aged 15-24 make up 40-56% of the total pool of unemployed workers in the Caribbean.

In Jamaica, there are approximately 127,000 unattached youth. Research by HEART/NTA suggests that 70 percent of unemployed youth have no skills training.  In four of the parishes where crime is highest, there is a large number of unattached males. I will paraphrase one of Prime Minister Golding's many salient points from his budget presentation, whereas of the 39,000 students who graduate from high school here, only 14,000 will access tertiary education and approximately 25,000 of them will have no employment options and no other constructive engagement. While Jamaica claims universal access to primary education, quality remains a concern as 30 percent of primary school leavers are illiterate—50% of the boys are. Also, of the 50,000 students who enroll in primary school every year, 11,000 do not progress beyond Grade 9.

We say the youth are the future.  As often as we may hear it, it is important that we remember the indelible impact that youth development, or the lack thereof, has on regional growth and competitiveness.   Today’s youth are the next generation of employees, business owners and policymakers. Therefore if we, as stakeholders in this region, want to see the Caribbean improve its security and its global competitiveness, we must strategically invest in programs that support youth development.

The at-risk youth cohort is a major focus of President Obama and his administration. The U.S. government, through USAID, aims to get at the root causes of crime and related social ills by improving basic education, beginning with early childhood programs, creating more opportunities for gainful employment, preventing the spread of HIV, and improving community security.

The Obama administration plans to increase programming in the Caribbean. Youth-focused programs include:

1) the Caribbean Youth Empowerment Program, conducted in partnership with the International Youth Foundation, which targets young people from vulnerable backgrounds in Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and Jamaica by providing training and job placement services;

2) a regional partnership framework to combat HIV/AIDS to be launched later this summer, which includes a focus on prevention especially among young people; and

3) a new Caribbean Basin Security Initiative to address common security concerns throughout the region, including the root causes of crime and violence.

So how can we achieve greater impact and provide greater opportunities for Caribbean youth?

The International Labor Organization’s 2008 Global Employment Trends Report speaks to the importance of youth having access to not just employment, but access to quality employment.  That report posits a disconnect between education and the world-of-work and recommends therefore that stakeholders, such as educational institutions and employers, engage in interventions that help to improve this link.  Such an initiative is already underway here in Jamaica and we plan to support it.  We will also lend our full support to the Ministry of Education’s Transformation program with an infusion of $15-18 million over the next five years.

In addition to improving the quality of education, we can jointly support youth-focused activities in sports, music and the arts, while building their job skills and preparing them for the world of work. Programs should certainly include young people who have exited the system, hence giving them a second chance to overcome disadvantages and past mistakes.    

At USAID, between 2005 and 2009, we supported nearly 3000 at-risk youth through our Expanding Educational Horizons project. This was done through partner NGOs such as the People’s Action for Community Transformation (PACT) and Children First. We successfully returned 96 percent of them to traditional high schools. 

Through our Community Empowerment and Transformation project we are supporting 4000 students in underserved communities by enabling them to access GoGSAT – an online learning program – to help them to prepare for the Grade Six Achievement Test. We did this because we recognized that youth who dropped out of school due to poor academic performance for example, were prime targets for gang recruitment. The pilot program involving 370 students yielded an 80 percent pass rate.

In Latin America, specifically in Brazil, Ecuador and Uruguay, Partners for the Americas – a US-based private voluntary organization- launched a project called ‘A Ganar’– which means ‘lets win’. This project uses football and other team sports to prepare youth for employment. ‘A Ganar’ teaches them teamwork and discipline, while equipping them with skills in topics like customer service and information technology. The project engages youth ages 17 to 24 from marginalized communities and has the participation of community organizations, local business leaders and national football personalities. There are plans to expand this project across the region. We are in receipt of a proposal to mount such an initiative here in Jamaica.  I know football is very popular here so imagine how infectious more programs like this would be in the Caribbean.

We hope to collaborate with some of Jamaica’s Olympians to integrate sports with learning, and to give children access to role models who have excelled as a result of their hard work. For example, at the request of the Ministry of Education, we will support an expansion of a pilot after-school project called ‘Fun for Kidz’, which combines athletics and academics and has as its chief sponsor Olympian Sanya Richards.  I have personally seen the results of this program at Kingston High School.  I witnessed teenage boys and girls, who before this program could barely write their names, reading plays about sports figures in front of an audience of over 100 people.

We have also seen the birth and expansion of the Jamaica Youth Advocacy Network (JYAN) – a group developed under an earlier USAID project called JA-STYLE. I had the pleasure of participating in their first regional conference last year called ‘Yute X’. JYAN was designed by young people for young people, to develop youth leaders, increase youth participation in civil society, culture and the arts and promote healthy lifestyles.

We at USAID are energized and we hope our partners will also be energized, to innovate and implement programs that serve youth through sports, music, culture and the arts, as a means to building life skills and basic literacy and numeracy. 

We endorse the Prime Minister’s Youth Entrepreneurship Program. The YEP program is a timely initiative that gives high school graduates the option, after completing specific training programs, to access financing to start their own businesses. This initiative is 100 percent Jamaican, but we at USAID were pleased to help behind the scenes by working with private financial institutions to offset some of the risk associated with this type of venture.

We are also initiating a new Junior Achievement Program here in Jamaica to complement the YEP. This program aims to give students in upper elementary and secondary school insight into the world of entrepreneurship and help them to acquire skills in job-hunting, financial management and business ethics.   It is our hope that, upon completing the Junior Achievement program, students can access YEP when they graduate, and be on the road to really becoming entrepreneurs. 

We encourage our partners in the business community to create more opportunities for internships and mentoring programs, especially for youth at risk. After all, this only contributes to the creation of a wider and better prepared talent pool from which to select your next employee.

Friends, there is an urgent need for strategic and united interventions. The time to engage and support young people is now.  We must both prevent youth from falling into the high risk cohort and give those already at risk a second chance to succeed.

Congratulations to the persons being recognized this evening. Many of you are already involved in youth development programs. For those of you who are not, we invite you to take that passion you have and partner with us so that we can reach even more young people.  There are many ways to get involved:  matching financial contributions is one way but there are others.  If you are an athlete, sponsor a sports program.  If you are a performer, compose a song or theatrical production to advocate for positive change.  Any of you can become a spokesperson for one of these programs. 

Thank you and congratulations once again to all the awardees for your remarkable contributions.