Ministry of Education launches activities for Child Month

The month of May is dedicated to the nation’s children and the Ministry of Education launched its month of activities on Monday, with a prayer and breakfast ceremony.{{more}}

The theme selected for this year’s activities is ‘Education: Our Future – Teach us well’.

Activities include a march and rally scheduled to be held on May 31, and visits by the Inter-School Christian Fellowship to various schools throughout the country.

Gwenneth Cambridge, Senior Education Officer in the Ministry of Education, said that this was an important event in light of the recent incident where a fourth form student at the St Vincent Grammar School committed suicide.

“We need to provide that safety net for students who may fall through the cracks,” she said.

Other activities to observe Child Month will be the use of the various media formats to propagate information regarding issues affecting the nation’s youth, she said.

In her opening remarks however, Cambridge said that while it was the role of the Ministry to prepare the youth for the future, prayer was also very important.

“Because prayer is the cornerstone of any nation that wants to move forward into the future, we could not, with good conscience, launch Child Month, without divine intervention, given what is transpiring in today’s society and the world at large among our children,” she explained.

She added that the divine presence of God needed to be included in light of the many things that we have seen take place and that involve some of the nation’s young people.

“All children need that support,” Cambridge said.

Meanwhile, Louanne Gilchrist, the Chief Education Officer (CEO), said that when it comes to teaching the nation’s youth well, the ministry takes this mandate very seriously.

“The plan of the government is to ensure that all children of the nation are provided with an education that is going to ensure that they develop into peaceful, tolerant citizens of St Vincent and the Grenadines, who can take their place on the regional stage and the global arena,” Gilchrist said.

This good education starts with early childhood education, which according to Gilchrist, was crucial because young children learn quickly.

This is why the government started nine Early Childhood Education Centres across the country, with more to come in the coming months, the CEO said.

She added that the ministry was also beginning to focus in on Special Needs education.

“We want to make sure the poor and extremely vulnerable sectors of our population have all of its needs met,” Gilchrist said.

All of the Ministry’s plans could not be achieved alone, however.

“And for this reason you are here with us today,” she said, adding that all organizations and agencies had their parts to play.

She expressed the view that too often, parents judged their children too harshly, which led Gilchrist to appeal to teachers and parents alike to listen more to the adolescents.

“We need to listen, we need to look for the warning signs when they (adolescents) are in distress, when they are dealing with trauma.”

If government was putting various frameworks in place, Gilchrist said that it was the parents’ responsibility to protect and love their children.

She explained that the Ministry has partnered with UNICEF to launch the ‘Child Friendly Schools Initiative’ which was done because it was discovered that the environment in most schools was changing to a less welcoming one for students.

She encouraged all to become advocates for child rights and their protection.

“We are asking for your support to ensure our children are born into an environment that is safe and welcoming,” Gilchrist said.(DD)