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Youth ambassadors from across the Caribbean met last week in a regional youth forum in Suriname. Principally it was held to “finalize a report on the challenges and opportunities for youth in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy.” That important report was supposed to be presented to the Caribbean Heads of Government on Saturday. But the thing is - only 4 heads of government showed up which the youth ambassadors –representing 9 million youths in the region – didn’t take kindly to. Prime Minister Dean Barrow sent Minister of Youth and Sports Elvin Penner who returned today along with Youth Ambassadors Kera Bowen and Dylan Williams. Their first stop was the City Center Conference Room where Youth Ambassador Bowen made her disappointment known.

Kera Bowen, Youth Ambassador
“We had arranged for a summit to take place with the Heads of Governments. My issue with that is why call it a summit if you will only have representation from three heads there and a fourth showed up there on the second day. To show our displeasure with the situation, the Caribbean Youth Ambassadors stood up for 9 minutes representing the 9 million youths of the Caribbean that we represent in demonstration. I am still looking for a word to express my feelings to those persons who made comments that it wasn’t appropriate and we shouldn’t have done that but the situation taken by the Ministers, the position they took not to attend, made us as young people feel disrespected and that of youth are of low priority. Sending a Minister or a CEO to represent you is not the same as having a Minister there. It was called a summit and as young people we were not happy with what took place in Suriname.”

Hon. Elvin Penner, Minister of Youth and Sports
“I did feel very privileged to be there as the Minister and as the head of state. Like I said before our Prime Minister did have another event he was at. So I don’t think that the demonstration of the youths would necessarily pertain to our Prime Minister and I managed to be there for the four days with them and I advocated a lot for the youths.”

Kera Bowen,
“Yes the trip was worth it because we didn’t only have the heads of government meeting. We had an inauguration ceremony, we had our roles as CYAs, what is expected and what is not expected. So despite the last two days, yes the trip was worth it.”

Also on the trip were Belize’s representative on the commission – Alberto Vellos along with Anita Zetina – the Officer in Charge of UNICEF in Belize along with Sherlene Tablada also from UNICEF and a youth representative.