Future Leaders camp teaches kids to ‘Clean up mental garbage’
By Ryan Haas
Reporter-SKNVibes.com
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts-NEARLY one hundred children from the central Basseterre area gathered at the McKnight Community Center for the launch of the Central Basseterre Future Leaders Summer Camp 2008, where they will learn about various aspects of good citizenry.
Having funded the removal of piled up waste materials in McKnight one week ago, the Labour Party’s Constituency #2 candidate, Marcella Liburd now seems intent on cleaning up the mental ‘garbage’ that can affect youth in their idle time.
“I came up with the idea [for the camp] originally and contacted the stakeholders in central Basseterre. We thought it was a good idea to take these children who are on vacation and give them something positive to do, knowing that many parents are out at their jobs during the day,” said Liburd.
She stated that once the idea was suggested Camp Coordinator Denese Byron-Morris, a trained teacher, quickly came on board and recruited other vacationing teachers she knew to help out.
“We also decided to get young people who had just left school and may not yet be employed [to help as camp aides]. We actually ended up getting more volunteers than we really needed,” the parliamentary candidate said. 
The curriculum at the Future Leaders camp, which runs from the 18th-22nd, has been uniquely designed to teach the campers aged 5-12 about good moral and social behavior in a way that is engaging and entertaining.
“We thought we should not have the camp revolve around too many academic activities, since the children will be returning to school soon. We wanted to have them broadly educated in things like respect and good manners while doing fun activities,” said Liburd.
Some of the activities scheduled for the week include the viewing of a documentary about St. Kitts’ history, making arts and crafts projects and a visit to the Marine World located at South Friar’s Bay.
Throughout the week speakers will visit the students to tell them about the importance of being responsible members of society. Some of those scheduled to speak include members of the Police and Defense Forces, Deputy Prime Minister Hon. Sam Condor and Prime Minister Hon. Dr. Denzil Douglas.
Liburd said she is perhaps most excited that storytellers from the Federation will be taking time to teach the campers about their craft.
“We have some very good persons coming in who really understand the art of storytelling, persons such as Creighton Pencheon, Loughlin Tatem and Carla Astaphan,” she said enthusiastically.
The speaker for the opening day of the camp was Constituency #2 representative, Hon. Dwyer Astaphan who advised the children to keep unhealthy foods out of their bodies and to eliminate viewing vulgar television shows.
“Foolishness in, means foolishness out; sensible in, means sensible out—and sensible is what I am about,” was the mantra Astaphan had the young children repeat and pledge to follow at the end of his speech.
Liburd said she hopes the camp will become an institution “on a much grander scale” in the years to come, in spite of the program’s already ambitious goals.
She also took time to thank the sponsors of the camp for their significant contributions, including Contec, Island Bakery and several individual sponsors who are helping to fund a stipend to some of the volunteers. ~~Adz:Right~~
