Several male leaders have set out to instil more values and set positive examples for boys during Project Safeguarding Our Future Today (Project SOFT).
Among them is Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams who urged about 40 first form boys not to be ashamed to refuse drugs, and to avoid succumbing to peer pressure.
“If one of your friends asks you to take an illegal substance and tries to make you feel small. . . that doesn’t matter.
“You know what is right and what you are supposed to do. If you know what is right, you should not be afraid or ashamed,” Abrahams said.
He made those comments on Wednesday during one of the sessions entitled Young Boys, Future Men! at Eastern Caribbean Bible College, Ruby, St Philip.
The camp is facilitated by the National Council on Substance Abuse (NCSA) and during the session, they were presented with a $40 000 donation from Massy Foundation.
Project SOFT began on April 16 and will end on Saturday. It is in its 21st year, however, this is the first time the camp is hosting all boys.
“We chose all boys and all male leaders because we’ve been getting anecdotal evidence that boys are exposed to too many females or not as many males as they ought to at this development stage.
“Given the anecdotal evidence we thought this was the perfect time to have camp for boys,” said NCSA Manager Betty Hunte.
During the camp, they will do team building skills, go through conflict resolution exercises, learn how to make kites and roast breadfruit.
“The camp is a life skills camp because you need all the skills you can to refuse drugs. This is a critical transition point. Our children at 11 and 12 are bombarded with a lot of choices; therefore having something like this links well to help them build their refusal skills to violence, for making bad choices,” Hunte added.
CAMP SOFT will be staged again during the summer with its regular mixed sessions. (TG)