When families and communities fail to provide a sense of belonging for young people, some are seeking it elsewhere — and finding it in gang membership.

That blunt appraisal by Reverend Nicholas Tweed struck a chord at the Save Our Sons conference. He was roundly applauded and given a standing ovation when he told the packed audience “it is a strange culture where a gang can substitute for what families fail to provide”.

Stemming the flow of new recruits into Bermuda’s gang culture will take a hard dose of reality and a concerted, collaborative community effort, according to the St Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church pastor who delivered the keynote speech at the conference held at Sandys 360.

The in-depth forum probed the Island’s gang-related issues. A report from the conference carrying recommendations and strategies will be submitted to Government and key stakeholders.

“As much as we may not like it, as distasteful as it may be, and as offensive as the impact may be — gangs seem to provide a sense of belonging that is not provided in other places in our society,” said Rev Tweed.

“We must begin creating alternatives. We must let every young person know that they are too precious to lose.

Stop telling our children that they’re the future. No, they’re the present, they are the right now. When we postpone investing in our children it’s too late.”

He noted the many conflicting messages on violence, which often begin at home. “Every time we hear somebody cursing at a child, you’re teaching a child how to be violent.

“Every time we see parents beating on a child, we’re teaching a child to be violent. Every time we see somebody incapable of articulating or expressing what concerns them without attacking another person, that’s violence,” he said.

“We communicate and convey violence as a means of social control in so many ways. And then when it rears its head in its most extreme fashion we then isolate the person responsible and absolve ourselves of sharing the responsibility of creating an environment in which violence always seems to be a first option rather than a last recourse.”

Rev Tweed said that, in the same way Government and corporate Bermuda galvanise their resources to promote and support business, the same should be done for the Island’s children. He called on all stakeholders to garner the same support “to invest in our children to ensure that we do not lose them”.

“If this fails to occur it’s because we, that means all of us, continue to fail our children in terms of aiding and abetting a system that continues to create the positions in which violence and gangs, drugs and poverty, hopelessness and despair, claim the lives of our children.

He said the victims of violence were not only those who are killed. “Those who continue to live [are] forever scarred by the loss of a child now buried, robbed of any potential to be nurtured and blossom and contribute to the life of the human family.

“Many of us bear the scars emotionally and psychologically of the continued damage that this issue creates both in us and in the life of our community.”

Rev Tweed noted “we only deal with violence in retrospect”.

He said: “We deal with violence as a response to an act that has already been committed.

“But most of us realise that dealing with something after the fact only leads to efforts to contain what we already know is out of control.”

Reflecting on Bermuda’s history and status as one of the last remaining colonies he said the impact of violence and inequality had a tremendous impact on “colonised people”.

“Many of us don’t like the word colonised because it’s a little provocative. We need to begin calling a spade, a spade.”

He called on the Civil Service to dump the counter productive silo mentality.

“We’re disparate elements weakened by our disunity. Instead of coming to see that we must all work in tandem together based on our shared interests and commitment to end violence.”

The current climate, he said, pitted Government department against each other “because of competing budgets”.

“Departments are having to constantly fight to prove their worth instead of understanding that we ought to be collaborating, working and understanding, without necessarily duplicating and using our resources wisely to work and make a difference in the life of our community.”

He continued: “It’s unfair to simply expect law enforcement to handle a social problem — we must partner with law enforcement.

“It’s not simply a criminal justice issue, it only becomes one after the fact and all of us know that the real issues are deeper than that. We must address these issues before they rise or cross a threshold of some of the extreme acts of violence that we see,” said Rev Tweed.

“We must engage in partnership over individuality. We must begin to not only look at individual accountability.”

He warned that individual accountability without communal responsibility would not resolve the problem. “It’s not either the individual or the community — it’s both the individual and the community.

Bermuda children deserve a chance to release their potential without fear of reprisals, he added. “We can no longer afford to let anybody off the hook. I don’t just mean the trivial act of pointing fingers and blaming others for what they’re not doing. We must strive to be proactive rather than reactive — be just as committed to prevention as we are to punishment.

“Perhaps it means we must take a look at the very moral fabric of how we gauge [and] deal with violence in our community.

“We need to remind people of their inherent worth and the fact that they do have alternatives and options even sometimes when they cannot see them themselves,” said Rev Tweed.

“Victor Hugo once said if the soul is left in darkness sin will be committed. The guilty one is not the one who commits the sin but the one who causes the darkness.

“In our renewed commitment and resolve never to leave any child behind but to do whatever it is that is necessary to galvanise all of our resources because they are too precious too lose, let us never be guilty, let it never be said of us that we are they who create the darkness.”

“The hour is late, the challenge is way too great and the potential loss of our youth is too devastating to accept. It’s not ‘if we don’t’ — it’s ‘we must!’.”