 Civil Society and law enforcement agencies specializing in youth justice are resuming discussions to enhance the management, design, and implementation of programs and strategies geared towards positive social changes for the youth, funded by USAID and overseen by the OECS commission under the OECS project. The aim of the national workshop underway in St. Lucia and five other OECS territories is to conduct a child justice and childcare protection and adaptation legislative review. The deliberative exercise will also attempt to select pragmatic interventions for diversion, rehabilitation, aftercare, and reintegration for inclusion in the national work plan, strategy and future court registers and consider the review of the draft juvenile justice policy for adaptation. We really want to start pushing the implementation and we need to get this done to get our legislative drafting happening, get our policy frameworks in place because while we may have a law we need the other structures around it to really implement and more importantly if we're going to look at changing child and youth justice in the region we need programs to support it. The Ministry of Equity, Social Justice and Empowerment which has oversight for several institutions catering for vulnerable and at risk youth like the Boys Training Centre, the Upton Gardens Girls Centre and the Transit Home is the OECS national collaborating partner with an overall goal of transformation of the youth justice system across member states through support for diversion, rehabilitation and reintegration. Women and Secretary Dr. Shaman Hippolyte-Manwin says the national dialogue is opportune in the face of an escalating crime situation and other anti-social and deviant behaviors among young people. Importantly you will be contributing to social protection as we seek to address the needs of vulnerable populations especially focused on our children and youth at risk. Our social protection policy addresses preventive, promotive, protective and transformative aspects of social development thus successful project development and implementation of the OECS OECS project forms part of the social protection landscape and you would appreciate too that the Ministry of Equity on its own do have a host of other social protective activities that we are engaged in. The opportunity to advance and support youth for success OECS project builds on the many successes achieved under the 2012 to 2022 juvenile justice reform project the JJRP and will run until 2026.