By Ketricia Finch
St. Kitts Reporter
The Washington Archibald High School (WAHS) was victorious at the 2007 Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (RBTT) Young Leaders Project, which comprised three other schools: Charlestown Secondary School (CHS), Gingerland High School (GHS) and the Lyn Jeffers Secondary School (LJSS).
WAHS was awarded the highest rank for educating their community on HIV/AIDS through a comic book story sponsored by UNICEP, a day fair and display boards.
Their AIDS comic led them to meet with the Scotland Cricket Team during Cricket World Cup 2007. The WHS Young Leaders used their leadership skills at helping students at their school to prepare for CXC examinations last year.
The CXC results were raised from 78% to 82% as a result of the WAHS young leader assistance. The awards ceremony was held at the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank Auditorium last week Thursday.
Apart from WAHS winning the trophy, all the schools were awarded for participating in the competition. Karen Nisbett collected a certificate of achievement in honor of CHS. Teran Lawrence, Candy Origard and Jevon Henrickson did the same for GHS, LJSS and WAHS respectively.
The award for the most outstanding Young Leader went to Jermaine James of WHS.
Latoya John of CHS was presented with an award of merit on behalf of her school. CHS was recognized for their creative arts and theatre group. Their message of self-worth came through from a drama production performed at the Nevis Cultural Center. They also did an informercial aired on MTV.
They then organized a youth retreat program, motivational visits to primary schools and the designing of their own young leaders logo.
LJSS was acknowledged for giving young people a chance to discuss relevant issues of the society, ask questions and listen to other comments from young people. They had a weekly 30-minute radio program where they discussed topics such as how to balance school work with social life and how young is too young to date. The chairperson of the ceremony said the program has become so popular, that its organizers are seeking to continue it throughout the next academic year.
Majorie Morton gave brief remarks as being one of the three judges of the competition. She congratulated all the young leaders, along with their teachers who assisted them with their young leader’s projects.
“The theme for the RBTT Young Leaders Project 2007 was Realizing Self-Worth – Your choice, Your Destiny was both challenging and topical. We, the judges recognized that there were also external challenges necessitating adjustments in the normal flow of the school term. We commend all of the schools that participated this year in the Young Leaders Project. Despite the challenges the young leaders enthusiasm never dampened. They focused on the tasks and most of the groups met the deadline dates for submitting their finished projects,” Morton said.
Morton gave reference of the judges’ reports relating to the overall performance of the schools throughout the project. She said she hopes the report would inspire them to continue to strive for excellence in all our their endeavors.
“This year we noted a general lowering of the standard of the project. One school however, showed significant improvement by raising their standards. The judged ranked the work done by the young leader as commendable. Each project had its uniqueness which brought out leadership skills enabling us to see the potential of our youth just waiting to be channeled in meaningful ventures.”
Morton commended RBTT for providing the availability of the young leaders project.
Morton congratulated the schools for using the media – print, radio or television to bring forward their message.
“Most importantly your contact with people, whether your peers or other vulnerable groups stood out.”
Morton, who has been with the program for about 10 years, also received an award on behalf of the RBTT Management and Staff.
The young leaders group is comprised merely of high school pupils whose goals are to educate the community on issues facing today’s world throughout their academic year. At the beginning of each school year, a different topic is chosen to work on and every year, RBTT acknowledges the various young leaders groups.
