BASSETERRE, St.Kitts (Friday 23rd August 2019)- For 12 years in a row, the Parliamentary Representative of Central Basseterre Marcella Liburd has hosted a Future Leaders Summer Camp and to date, she is pleased with the feedback she has gotten from the young adults who reflect on how their camp experience contributed positively to their growth and development.
The yearly camp, which kicked off on Monday 19th August with about 100 participants ages 5 to 12 in attendance, is slated to finish today (Friday) with a march throughout the streets of Basseterre.
On Wednesday 21st August, this media house paid a visit to the camp hosted at the McKnight Community Centre where the youngsters were seen boarding buses for an outing at Flow Grounds.
“We have some of the persons who were with us from 12 years ago, they have already passed 18 in age and some of them come back to say thanks for what happened during those years even though at the time –as one of the said they were obstinate – but we understand how 5-year old, a 6 –year- old is going to behave so you just have to guide them and so I myself feel proud of the end product; those we see now who are adults and would remember when they used to come to the camp and the kind of training we had in terms of god behaviour and so on is paying dividends for us today,” Liburd stated during a chit-chat with this media house.
Commenting on the vision she had when the camp was started, Liburd talked about the community playing a part in the upbringing of children.
“It still takes a community to raise a child, and so we thought we would help in that regard by helping the parents, the guardians,the teachers and the children themselves. The idea of calling it ‘Future Leaders’, we are really training them to be leaders in their own spheres whatever field they would want to go into. We want them to be leaders in their particular fields and so we try to ensure that they understand what good behaviour is all about, what resect is all about ; respect for themselves , respect for others, respect for God with our daily devotions.”
“So the whole point is to ensure that as they grow into adults, they become good citizens and good leaders in their various fields,” Liburd noted.
This year’s camp was observed under the theme ‘Celebrating Our Culture’
“We tried to see how we could get them to understand not just culture in terms of performing arts and so but culture in terms of what are we as a people, who are we as Kittitians and Nevisians, the things that we value that we value our family values, that is also part of our culture so it is a mixture of both,” Liburd explained.
Liburd is the Deputy Leader of the Opposition St.Kitts-Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP).