A regional meeting on gangs was held last week in Georgetown Guyana. It wasn't just another talk shop: the First Sub Regional Youth Gangs and Violence Meeting was to discuss a pilot project to contend with gang violence n Belize, Guyana, St. Kitts and Trinidad and Tobago.
Douglas Hyde represented Belize and he told us that CARICOM experts will be arriving in Belize to assess the situation as early as the end of this month:..
Douglas Hyde
"They are looking at 3 or 4 deferent things; one is definitely a community mapping where they want to make sure that the evidence is there of these gangs. Capacity building; where they are going to train persons in the area of youth and violence, so they can understand the whole gang trends, and the whole background to the whole gang and culture and very much importantly to do an analysis of what Belize is not doing. They want to do a gap analysis and to see more or less how they can assist in what we miss that we could probably catch through this process. And of course CARICOM coming to Belize is something great because of course giving that extra support of what our government is pushing is something very much what we need. It's not just one person or just the government's stand point to do everything. What they are bringing is basically what worked in their country and more or less to share with us what basically are some of the tools that we may not use. It's not to say that they are coming to tell us more or less what they want to us to do, but to help us to realize that there may be something that we may miss and it have worked in their country before and also it's still working and so that itself may be a plus. And then of course every extra person or idea or suggestion wouldn't hurt."
The meeting, was organized by the CARICOM Secretariat, the United Nations Development Programme and the Government of Canada.
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