Sport Must Contribute More to Saving and Shaping Vincentian Society
At the time of writing this week’s Column the annual schools’ athletics festival has not yet taken place and hence will be featured in the following week’s Column in The News newspaper.
During the past week, president of the St Vincent and the Grenadines Olympic Committee (SVGOC), Stephen Joachim, seized the opportunity on more than one occasion to bring to the nation’s attention, his own experience of seeing a young boy, looking almost vagrant-like, sitting in a public drain. The stark reality forced the question of the state of mental health amongst many of our nation’s youths and young people.
The leadership of our country and indeed many of our civil society organisations need ask ourselves whether or not we are taking the time to look at Vincentian society today, analyse it carefully and determine our contribution to making a positive impact. Perhaps we have allowed ourselves to become immune to the growing numbers of youth, born under the so-called education revolution, who have succumbed to mental health issues with little or no help being on offer.
Vincentian initiatives
Some time ago, the government introduced a ‘Pan Against Crime’ initiative. Tou our knowledge that has not been any publicly announced evaluation of the impact of the initiative.
The crime statistics of our beautiful country over the past several years since the introduction of the ‘Pan Against Crime’ initiative has been horrendous. We have witnessed new national records for the number of murders committed in a single year on several occasions and an incredibly disturbing growth in youth involvement in crime, including murders.
Despite the absence of any publicly provided statistics on the performance of the ‘Pan Against Crime’ initiative, the government later introduced a ‘Sport Against Crime’ initiative. For the length of time that this latter initiative has been in place, like its predecessor, there has not, as yet, been any public enunciated impact analysis undertaken.
Unfortunately, we continue to be bombarded with what is obviously a new normal in Vincentian society – pervasive youth crime.
There seems little interest on the part of the governmental authorities to address the causes of crime. Emphasis is placed on solving crimes and even that we have not been doing very well.
It should be very disconcerting that while on the one hand we hear our leaders proclaim the success of an education revolution, we hear very little on the reason for generations born under the same revolution to get involved in serious crime.
But the challenges confronting Vincentian society does not end with increased crime nor the growing number of young people who have taken to that lifestyle. We have witnessed increases in the number of vagrants on our streets and the percentage of young people who have fallen prey to mental disorders.
We are witnessing the historically incredible growth in the number of Vincentian youths who are inflicted with mental disorders.
Generally, Vincentians are not given any explanation for the aforementioned transformation of our social reality and few seem to care.
The Vincentian response
Whilst there have been counsellors employed by the Ministry of Education to address issues amongst students in schools around the country, it does appear that they are too few in number to meet the growing demands as evidenced by media reports on the continuing abuse, including violence, being inflicted on children by different members of the society, including and perhaps especially, within their own families.
Vincentians are still, by and large, much too eager to write off those who are afflicted by even the most basic mental issues. This leaves the latter to their own devices, which is usually to take to the streets and join the ranks of the unkempt, daily degenerating as human beings, Vincentians, in their own society.
Lack of good example by leaders in different social institutions, including politics, across the country, offers a trove of opportunities for children and youths to opt to adopt ways of behaving they now understand to be acceptable, but which are really the undoing of our society.
For many decades, Vincentian society was once perceived as decidedly Christian in nature and people looked out for each other and each other’s families. There was a greater sense of community founded upon the pervasive acceptance of society’s dominant values. There was a strong sense of morality and adherence to high ethical standards. Today, all of the foregoing has been sent down the drain, much to our nation’s peril.
It is also unfortunate that the ever-impactful moral decay may well have also hit our religious leaders perhaps as much as is the case with our other social institutions. They now have to confront declining attendance at their activities, especially among youths.
The heady rush to boast of ‘development’ has really only meant economic, materialist growth and with this, the decadent values associated with nations that have turned awry. Our children are more consistently socialised by what they see and hear on social media agencies than parents, teachers and pastors. Peer pressure comes from within but more so from societies far removed from our country.
Parents are not only unaware of the plethora of influencers and influences impacting their children’s behaviour enough to be able to manage it and/or intervene when needed.
Another problem is that with children making children at a rapid pace, older men turning to ever-younger girls for sexual relationships and increases in prostitution in different forms, parents are so often in competition with their children for the same experiences and material gains that they are of little help to them. The blind cannot lead the blind very well.
At the end of the day, we continue to show ourselves, as Vincentians, to be much less caring than we profess to be.
Forging sport’s response
Joachim, in speaking at the physical activity event of the SVGOC’s Gender Equity Commission on Saturday last, lamented the ‘sad state of affairs in our country in respect of the growing number of youths who are rapidly swelling the ranks of vagrants on the nation’s streets and what is says of us and our continued boast of being a Christian society’. He noted that all of us in sport (including and his Swimming Association and the SVGOC) ‘need to ask ourselves what we have done to effect change in respect of this unacceptable situation’.
The fact is, if we are brutally honest with ourselves, that sporting organisations have done what the rest of society has been doing for decades, precious little.
It is however never too late to make a start.
Our national sports associations have to re-tool our coaches, engage children and youth, offer good example and facilitate wholesome behavioural practices, at all times.
The concept of safe sport must not be limited to protecting children from early and indiscriminate sexual exploitation and abuse. We must be much more attuned to readily detect evidence of mental abuse of and by all involved.
There is an urgent need to include sport psychologists on the team of those responsible for the social development of our children who are encouraged to get involved in physical activity and sport.
Our coaches must be taught how to identify potential social inhibitors and engage professional personnel to address what they are unable to do themselves. Human life is much too valuable to our society to be allowed to its wastage. Early detection of behavioural change must be a priority in sports organisations, schools, clubs or amongst national representative teams.
National sports associations are socialising agents, and all stakeholders must be made aware of the impact they have on the development of their members, including athletes.
There is growing emphasis on parental involvement in the sport development programmes of associations. They must be informed of all that is being done and why. The benefits of every aspect of training but be explained to parents.
There must be a shift towards forging alliances with social institutions whose combined commitment to sport development must be imbued by a commitment to positive human development, the crafting on individual integrity and a willingness to be open enough when the storm signals are being experienced.
Caring Society
Vincentians must acknowledge the sad state in which our society has found itself and commit to making St Vincent and the Grenadines whole again.
It is not too late for those in sport to show by example, that it is possible to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper.
Together, those of us involved in sport can craft ourselves into centres of human caring.
