Yesterday, the Ministry of Youth hosted a workshop focusing on youth mainstreaming. It highlights ways to make the lives of young people easier by reducing the social inequality they face. The Ministry was working in collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretariat, and we learned more about what youth mainstreaming encompasses.

Dr Terri-Ann Gilbert-Roberts, Research Mgr., Office of SecGen., Commonwealth Secretariat
"The world in which young people are living in is constantly changing and so some of the people in the room are not people who will ever be able to speak to some of the things young people will ever experience in the future. They're not up to date on technology so we make sure that we had young people with us in the room too to help us identify but we're talking about how do we ensure young people are not discriminated against and they get access to opportunities for training, employment, health and wellbeing, every sector, that's what mainstreaming is about. In every sector of the society, because 70% of the Belizean society are young people, it means that in everything we do, we have to consider the implications for them. When you're talking about technology for example, how is the government going to work together to ensure there is the education framework to ensure that young people can take advantage of the technology, that there is the technological advancement to make sure the technologies are available and that also there is a framework legislatively to make sure that we protect young people when they're engaging in these new transformative technologies."

Michelle Small-Bartley, Program Mgr., Youth Dev., CARICOM Secretariat
"Mindset is not something that changes very quickly, it has to be done through a systemic process and by this, this is one of the reasons I'm starting with this workshop. Actually, I'll say continuing with this workshop, because we started in 2022. It will take time for persons to understand their roles and it will take time for persons to understand exactly what needs to be done. When we look not he intergenerational gap that exists, we realize the generations are years apart and what it says is that they are also mindsets apart. So what it says to be able to identify how we can actually fill that gap and help others to recognize what their roles and responsibilities are. So I am not expecting a miracle, I'm expecting that we will work on this and overtime it will eventually happen based on the systems and mechanisms we put in place."