The message from Bermuda’s youth is clear — “The Wall” is not the place where all the Island’s problems and ills originate, but it is the place where many young people end up because they have few other options.

And a loss of values and respect, tough working conditions for parents, and shifting attitudes amongst some adults towards youths have contributed to a feeling of alienation for many young people.

These were amongst views expressed by young people as they gave a candid snapshot of life in Bermuda from their perspective at an open meeting attended by Premier Ewart Brown and half-a-dozen ministers, as well as MPs and various senators.

As previously reported in the Royal Gazette Dr. Brown announced he had ordered an internationally successful youth empowerment programme called Uncommon Results, and run by former paratrooper Mark Charley, be brought to the Island in 2007.

And the Premier also indicated Government’s willingness to meet halfway with the group of young men and women who are seeking to revive a community youth club in the West End.

A lot of additional ground was covered in the three-and-a-half hour meeting in the AME Allen Temple Church in Sandys, which was attended by close to 100 people.

What “The Wall” means in the Bermuda of 2006 was described by Makai Dickerson and Steven Burchall, chairman and co-chair of the West End Community Youth Club committee, which is seeking to bring a youth club back to Sandys after the last one closed in 1999.

Mr. Burchall, 24, said: “Why are guys on the wall? Because they ain’t got nowhere else to go. If you give them a place to go I guarantee that more than 50 percent will be off the wall. What put them on the wall? Some of them did not have a loving home. For some of them the only love they get is on the street so they are going to go where that love is, that’s the reason.

“You sit in the yard and the mumma comes home and she say: ‘Yeah, you got all these guys all over the yard, you gotta go’. So where they gonna go? To someone else’s yard. Same thing happens. Mumma comes home ‘Get out of my yard’. Okay, now everyone is saying get out of the yard, so where they gonna go? They go on the street. That’s as real as I can say it.”

And Mr. Burchall reflected on the changing attitudes of older people towards the young: “When I was younger I used to be able to walk through people’s backyards to take a short cut home. You can’t do that no more because someone will call the Police and say you are trespassing. You know, if it’s a 53 year-old walking through the yard it’s like ‘Okay, go ahead’ but as soon as someone 19 or 20 walks through the yard it’s ‘Okay — we got a young black man who’s walking through my yard.’ All that has to stop.”

Mr. Burchall said he had become involved with the move to create a youth club in the West End in order to help the next generation of young people find an alternative to the wall. So that they might have a place and provide them with a positive outlet for their ideas and energy.

Giving his perspective, Makai Dickerson said: “It seems to me that the community has the perception that everything negative that happens in the Island comes off of ‘The Wall’. That’s not entirely true. I sit on the wall at times. These are my people. I was raised with them, we came up together. We are still together now. If we want to see each other we do.

“We are labelled as thieves and violent for sitting out there, but no one can give me a legitimate place where we can go. They say ‘Why are you sitting on the wall, go home’. Okay, if you work 8-to-5 every day and go home, eat and go sleep, well that’s fine if it’s what you do. But if you are a sociable person and like to get out there and talk to your people and just be out, where are you supposed to go?”

Most of the people on the wall want to see positive things, said Mr. Dickerson.

And he said he had spoken to some of the very young people who had started sitting on the wall and asked them why they were doing it. Their answer was that they had nowhere else to go.

He said he told them “Well, you know we are trying to get a community centre for you.” And then he shocked them by telling them that the people driving past in cars considered those on the wall to be violent, thieves and drug dealers.

And when he had finished talking to them he walked off and then turned around to see they were also leaving the wall.

“So you see, they do want to go somewhere,” he said.

On the subject of gangs he said: “You can call it gangs or whatever you want, but I call it a group of unionised individuals. We have unity together. If I’m hungry and I can’t get food from home my boy will feed me, if I need a place to relax my boy will find me a place to relax and vice versa. We have that type of love and community.”

And he also saw a change in the young people growing up, giving an example of how he had gone to school in Detroit when he was 10 and when he returned to Bermuda one day saw a girl slip at school and he laughed.

“I looked around and I was the only one laughing. Everyone else was saying to the girl ‘Oh, are you okay?’ You would not see that today. The reason why is because the kids today are way, way west from when I was coming up at that age.

“If someone slipped today she would cry and go home because everyone would be laughing. That’s sad but it’s true. That’s the difference I see everyday. I see how these little kids go on.”

Mr. Dickerson said he felt a big part of that change in attitude was people moving away from Christian teaching and values.

He said: “The youth centre is so important for all these reasons. We youths need an outlet. We want to have education and recreation.”

And he said the youth centre would be a place where youngsters could go indulge in creative activities such as music-making, sports and moto-cross.