ST JOHN’S, Antigua – Minister of Education Dr Jacqui Quinn-Leandro says that the embattled Ottos Comprehensive School will be the first to benefit from the influx of $40,000 the Partnership for Peace Programme (PfP) received last week.
“We are going to pilot it in Ottos Comprehensive School, one of the schools that we have been having some amount of difficulty with in term of violence and in terms of deviant behaviour. We are extremely grateful to Brysons and Nagico for responding,” said Dr Quinn-Leandro.
The monies were jointly donated by Brysons Shipping & Insurance and Nagico Insurance last week at the latter’s 30th anniversary celebration.
Marjorie Parchment, Brysons’ manager, says that the future of Antigua & Barbuda’s youth is paramount to both companies, saying, “I was very concerned with what I considered to be an increase in violence among our young men …. I think our young men are at a crossroads at the moment and I think as a society we owe it to them.”
The Ministry of Education and the Directorate of Gender Affairs, who will administer the programme, believes that the much needed funds will allow them to fast-track the violence prevention programme’s implementation into Ottos Comprehensive and in other schools throughout the nation.
The PfP programme is a violence prevention program for secondary school boys supported by UN Women with the aim of increasing knowledge of gender socialisation and to attempt to help young men differentiate between healthy and unhealthy relationships.
The PfP was piloted in Antigua & Barbuda at the Boys Training School for Gender Affairs in March to what was described as “good results.”
(More in today’s Daily OBSERVER)
