Gang members are seeking educational opportunities
Gang members are enrolling at Bermuda's Adult Education Centre to gain their GEDs and, in some cases, learn to read and write.Young men are using the facility both to try to better themselves educationally and to stay off the streets and out of trouble, according to Donna Daniels, executive director of the facility.She told parliamentarians yesterday: “There are so many young men who are trying to stay out of the gangs and do have such brilliance. One young man told his teacher: ‘This is the first time that I have ever walked out of school every day with a smile on my face'.”She added: “They come every day because they want to achieve. They want to progress.”Ms Daniels said the centre had an intake of about 200 male and female students a year, with 55 gaining their GED certificates.But she said some people struggled to pay the fees for the course, the initial assessment and to sit the GED exam at Bermuda College.Ms Daniels told the joint select committee on violent crime and gun violence that the centre received an annual grant from Government but this had been “decreased significantly” in the last three years due to the Island's economic challenges.“We are hoping that the Ministry of Education will be able to support us in some capacity but we do recognise the economic challenges and the need for cuts,” she said.Ms Daniels said it was extremely important for the community to recognise that there was a problem with adult literacy and a need for alternative educational institutions, such as the centre.She compared the cost of educating a person for between $5,000 and $8,000 a year or keeping them in jail for $81,000.“There is absolutely no comparison. This comparison should be the compelling argument to ensure that adult education gets a level of funding to ensure that our people are well served.”Earlier in the hearing, a scheme which would see “at risk” youngsters from Bermuda get involved in multimillion dollar overseas infrastructure developments was proposed.Political activist Khalid Wasi suggested the idea could give young Bermudians the chance to prosper and become entrepreneurs and business owners in places such as Senegal, Ecuador and China.He told the committee that international companies and investors on the Island could be approached to fund the voluntary Operation Green Light programme.Mr Wasi said the exposure to a different kind of society would give participants many opportunities, help to create a third sector economy here and assist developing nations who were unable to fund such projects themselves.“The intrinsic idea is to filter these young, at risk people and offer the guidance to allow them the exposure and the inspiration to seek opportunity to become entrepreneurs and owners of businesses in these economies of these developing worlds, aided, of course, by the investments made possible in our society.“We have to create a vision and show them how they can actually make it in the bigger world.”Mr Wasi cited how so-called “thugs” from England were sent on ships around the world during the 16th and 17th centuries and how this opened up new vistas for them.Their adventures, he said, “gave status to the economic underclass of England”.The committee meets again today in the Senate chamber at 9.30am.
Spending large sums of money to tackle Bermuda's gang and gun problem is not necessarily the answer, according to a community safety expert.Arnold Minors, who was press secretary to former Premier Ewart Brown, told the joint select committee on crime yesterday that getting large numbers of people to work together in a co-ordinated way would be most beneficial and not necessarily costly.He said it could be 100 people, or 200, or 500. He proposed they be brought together in a one or two-day “action conference” to figure out what they could do to effect change.“I believe that sustained action requires passion and commitment. The process that I'm talking about energises large numbers of people to move forward.”Mr Minors, who lived overseas between 1964 and 2009, told how he worked to improve community safety in Toronto after a spate of gun violence among young black males.And he said he'd since been told his efforts saved the lives of at least three young men and helped countless others.Mr Minors said he'd noticed since returning to the Island that there had been a shift in the last 45 years away from the notion that “everybody is responsible for everybody else”.“The job of adults was to make sure that children grew up properly and anybody's child was everybody's child,” he said. “Bermudians took care of themselves.”Mr Minors, who is now working as a co-ordinating associate and planning a move back to Canada, told MPs that gun and gang violence was “everybody's problem”.He shared two proposals with the bipartisan committee: one on the action committee and another on a community safety plan adopted by Toronto in 2004.The latter, according to his plan, could be modified to work in Bermuda with leadership coming from a Premier's panel on community safety.“Given the nature of community safety that it requires the work of several departments it is appropriate that it be led by the Premier.“Membership would be on a volunteer basis. The Premier would chair the panel. Members might include leaders of the Opposition and the third party; two business representatives; a faith sector representative; a not-for-profit sector representative; a union representative; and two community representatives. Two youth representatives are a must.”
