Opening of Girl Guides campsite

If ever there was a time that children and young people need to be kept busy, in worthwhile pursuits, it is now. They seem to have too much free time.

That’s the opinion of President George Maxwell Richards, who, in his address at Wednesday’s launch of the National Campsite of the Girl Guides Association at Salybia, said “liming” preoccupied too much of young people’s time.

Shopping malls, he said, are central to this pastime of young people and held up guiding as the instrument to influence them into positive pursuits.

The President saw guiding as a useful after school activity and can have an impact on the larger community.

He encouraged leaders of the Guide movement to promote what they had to offer and advised them to embark on an aggressive recruitment drive.

“Others, with less noble intent, are fighting for the soul of the nation, as one calypsonian remarked not too long ago. Is it not our duty to present a better alternative?” the President asked.

He said members of the movement can become models of “dignified womanhood”, as they take on roles as wives, mothers, professionals and entrepreneurs.

“No one will deny that there is a serious need to remind our young, no less than our young men, of the importance of upholding the dignity of the human being. So much of what is seen on television and in the streets before the naked eye, suggest that there is little concern in that regard.”

Richards said many feel it was old fashioned thinking to complain, as some are quick to assert their rights with respect to public behaviour. “Right and wrong are now being given new definitions and we are encouraged to believe that all things are relative.

“This is a very confusing state of affairs for young people at various stages of their growth and it must be addressed.”

The President said a country’s development did not arise only from building industries, but from developing the people.

“Growth cannot be sustained if the masses are unemployable,” he said.