 Good evening to our in-house audience and our viewing public my name is Kendall Elver and it is indeed an honor for me to welcome everyone to the first vice presidential debate of the National Youth Council of St. Lucia. This body is currently preparing for elections and elections have been slated for the 27th of May at the Financial Administrative Center and that particular meeting shall take place from 9 a.m. and the organization believes that it is necessary for people to get an idea as to the various plans and proposals that the individuals who are vying for the first vice presidential position of the NOIC that people get to know what some of these ideas are but also for people to understand who are the individuals who are vying for these positions so at least our young people the members of the National Youth Council of St. Lucia and referring to individuals between the ages of 15 to 45 and persons who form part of youth organizations in St. Lucia at least two persons would be representing each club in terms of voting at the General Assembly and what we will be doing is that as moderator I will be asking at least four major questions and then we are going to proceed to the in-house audience who will pose questions to our first vice presidential candidates. These questions will cover at least five broad areas and they are as follows personal philosophy and experience, regional integration, membership, foreign relations and the various plans that the two individuals would be looking to execute if that individual gets elected. Let me say that before we go to our candidates that the first vice president of the National Youth Council of St. Lucia has responsibility for networking and ensuring that the organization is properly represented at the regional and international level so in terms of the gist of the responsibility it is a matter of handling the the foreign relations aspect of the National Youth Council of St. Lucia and at this moment I would like to introduce our first vice presidential candidates and to my immediate right we have Miss Kim Kayol and I want to say to you welcome Kim Kayol and to my far right we have Mr. Nius Alfred. Let us get started. In terms of you you have accepted the responsibility to become the first vice president of the National Youth Council of St. Lucia. Can you say to us what is your philosophical stance of life so at least we get to know who you are as a person. So we'll start with Miss Kayol. In a voluntary family so voluntarism is one of my A plus things that I feel needs to be grounded to your community and being grounded to my community is something that is family oriented for me. I also value our family relationships I value friendships I value things like that and the community base as well so for me partnerships networking is something that's very important for the lives of youth and this is something that I value. Thank you very much Mr. Alfred. Well I am I've always been known as a people's person wherever I go from the school level to community level as well throughout my community I've always been known as a people's person and the one thing that I believe in is that as a young person as a youth leader in particular you have to make the best use of the persons around you. You have to make the best use of the talents of the people around you so I'm very into you know helping persons as a part of a team I enjoy working as part of a team and I believe that I mean if you are a member of a team the team cannot function properly unless every single member of that team is performing to their fullest potential. So as a member of a team I always try to ensure that I try to uplift the people around me because when I believe them the team looks good and in so doing then everybody looks good and as the approach that I take to life in general whether it be persons in my family, friendships, if I have a friend who is not doing something that is you know too well I pull them up and you know let them know that you know what there's my stance on that that's probably what you need to change and I mean it's all about helping each other and in terms of my philosophy I think that would be my biggest one. Thank you very much Mr. Alfred but still on this given topic in terms of personal philosophy and experience can you share with us your professional experience, academic experience and link that to the responsibility of a first vice president of the National Youth Council of St. Lucia? In terms of my academics I have been involved in early childhood education also training for facilitators in terms of early years of youth pretty early so this is in terms of my academics and what I bring to the table I'm a trainer for the early childhood sector as well and in terms of my international backgrounds and so on I have been volunteering and working from a very very young age with my family in terms of international countries where we've been through the USA with youth to youth worldwide I've been through to Santo Domingo Haiti and Martinique because those are my cultural backgrounds and also this is part of what I do on a regular basis and it triggers down to community as well and back to St. Lucia. Mr. Alfred? Well in terms of my academic experience I'm very proud to say that you know I attended the Chousel secondary school from where I went to A level and my experience I decided to go up first and foremost for the post of vice president first vice president because I believe that my experience allowed me to contribute better in that capacity. As a student of the South Lewis Community College I was selected as a handful of carry-com student ambassadors through the program carry-com well CSME student ambassadors students engaging the CSME through field promotions I served as student ambassador from 2009 to 2011 in which during that period we had projects in Guyana and in Antigua as well and when I left school I became involved with the OECS Commission most recently as part of the OECS youth strategy I was actually one of the founding the first persons on board in actually trying to develop the OECS youth strategy and through that program I have gotten the opportunity to network with persons from all across the region in 2015 actually represented the OECS at the International Sports Conference which is something I'm very passionate about sports. Last year in April I spoke at the ministers of youth and directors of youth conference in St. Kitts I was also a guest panelist this year at a regional workshop regional conference in Anguilla that was a public education series for the OECS last year as well I was a guest at the Anguilla 12th conference on youth and development and that is only well some of the activities that have been involved with at the regional and international level and I believe that experience is something I would as already prepared me for the post of first vice president so I know for a fact that when I get into the rule that I will have adapted as quickly as possible and I will get the ground running. Thank you very much. I know that both of you are youth leaders and to an extent you have indicated the organizations that you are a part of but I think that there is still need just to indicate in terms of your membership of youth and sports organizations can you please provide some details and a synopsis in terms of what to do or the position to actually hold in such organizations. I am the president of UVIO and this is a community group that just won the community achievement award this year youth awards. I also serve in other countries as a youth leader and youth advocate so I I also have passion not only in St. Lucia but elsewhere for youth and in terms of my volunteering service putting programs like leadership programs together. We also have sports programs that we've done with my other groups in terms of football in terms of getting young people young mothers to attend programs for parenting and all of that in Martinique so I have done some of that work overseas and in St. Lucia I've also forwarded leadership programs self-defense with my own personal group community groups we have done stuff like gender-based violence and LGBT programs to incorporate our young people and to get them into different different you know programming and understanding of how can we move forward as youth so these are some of the things that I have participated in whether it be in St. Lucia or in other countries I have also been a part of youth to youth worldwide for quite a few years I think since I was 15 so this is also a certificate program that we do year after year after year it teaches us to be leaders it teaches us to implement programs into our communities and these are things that have been part of and can agitate her as well as the first vice president with my networking and and all my contacts that I have already made I can partner here and try to bring out some sustainable programs for our young people. Thank you, Stilesford. Well in terms of group involvement I am the co-founder and director of sports media organization SportAvi and basically the role of SportAvi is to give exposure for our young people in sports and actually to provide them with opportunities to develop themselves whether it be through academics or through their various sporting disciplines. I'm very proud to say that through collaboration with the OECS last year that SportAvi was able to launch regionally so right now we actually provide our services as a non-profit mostly to youth not just in St. Lucia but across the OECS. We give them it comes from you know giving them exposure helping them with profiles for their various sports helping them in terms of applications for school and actually trying to get funding for school so that is something that I'm really proud of and through continued collaboration with the OECS and I really have to thank them for their assistance thus far that has been going on and I mentioned earlier about my involvement with OECS and OECS is a program well initiated by the OECS Secretariat that tries to it is attempting to create a youth strategy that is born out of the ideas of young people so OECS Youth Empowered Society that's what OECS stands for. We've gone through two various countries basically on a community level trying to meet with persons at the grassroots level trying to meet with persons during focus group discussions to create a strategy that is tailored for young people. There's a lot of the time we have youth policies being made and you know they're just telling us what the what is wrong with young people and what should be done for young people but the approach that OECS is taking is that we are going to the young people the young people are our consultants. What do you want? What do you want us to achieve and what OECS is doing is trying to create a document so that OECS Secretariat can actually try to implement a lot of these programs and I mean apart from SPOT-AVI and OECS-ES I've also been involved on a community level. I am currently the Public Relations Officer of the Shoselef and Sports Council very involved in community activities in my community, community development group from a very early age so my involvement does not continue does not stop there. I always try to advise as much as possible to anybody who sticks my advice. My association while my organization SPOT-AVI we just won our second consecutive youth in media award so that must mean that you know we're doing something good and we just want to continue doing the good work that we are doing for the benefit of young persons in St. Lucia. Thank you very much Mr. Alfred. Let us move on to the theme of regional integration. The carry-on single market and economy has been described as a framework for which we unite our economies within the Caribbean community. Do you believe that young people stand to benefit from the CSME and in what way you believe that young people can benefit from the CSME? In terms of the CSME I still think there's a lot that needs to be done in terms of inclusion and in terms of us as a National Youth Council partnering and networking with them. There are benefits for young people but I still believe that there's a lot that we need to sit down and go through in terms of the drawing board and continue with when it comes to CSME so young people can benefit a lot more young people can have another voice a louder voice and we can advocate for different things so in terms of CSME there is a plus but we still need to work on some things together and partner and network. Okay in terms of CSME I think the issue is with education and information being shared because I'm pretty sure that a lot of young persons do know of a lot of the benefits that exist from the CSME and as a former CSME student and master I can tell you that CSME has a lot of I'm sure young persons in St. Lucia professionals in St. Lucia do not know that they have the opportunity not just to get employment in St. Lucia but in other countries as well as a member of the OECS all you need to get is get your skills certificate and you can actually get employment as if you're a teacher if you're a musician you don't have to limit yourself to the 238 square miles that we have there are other countries in the OECS that can actually go to get the information in terms of regional integration not just CSME but on the OECS level I'm sure a lot of young persons do know that you can get indefinite stay at any OECS country if you go to the to Antigua to Dominica they cannot ask you how long you're staying for the passport is term indefinites and you can actually get employment so right now young people have to understand that our job market as young people not just our labor market but where we can express ourselves is not just in Lucia anymore it has expanded to within the curriculum region within the OECS region so I think that as the NYC one of the things that we need to do is to collaborate with the curriculum youth ambassadors to ensure that programs are put in place to educate young people about the benefits of being part of the CSME and what you can actually do to actually contribute to the movement thank you mr. Alfred and thank you miss Kayol the NYC its highest decision making body is the general assembly and the general assembly is constituted by youth and sports organizations at the community level there are persons who say that there is a lack of interest on the part of the average young person as it relates to joining youth and sports organizations we for casual observation there is the issue of people will say to you that the grassroot community based youth organization is not as active as it used to be in the heady days of NYC as first vice president what do you intend to do to get more young people involved in the work of the NYC and joining these youth and sports organizations at the community level miss Kayol I am the immediate past assistant general secretary of the National Youth Council so I do have internal knowledge as to what was some of the issues and have done a certain analysis on my personal level to understand what it is I've also worked with the 19 districts in that tenure so I'm quite aware of what the disconnect is and what are some of the issues what we call an attached youth are faced with and when it comes to community based and grassroots we do have a lot of grassroots clubs but they need support and their support system there's a hierarchy so you have the grassroots system and the grassroots organizations their support comes from the district youth and sports councils and the district youth and sports councils their support comes from the NYC the umbrella body so as your first vice president I would like to initiate along with my team the NYC I want to see program and this program covers what we say inclusion it includes the district youth and sports councils revamp in the organizations also our clubs and at a community level and this is something that as a first vice president I would like to see so we do a sort analysis with all the stakeholders involved including the autism society including differently able including LGBT including uniform groups and to come with a different program that would assist us from the grassroots bottoms-up approach thank you miss Kyle miss Elva you mentioned well during the question that the general assembly is basically the governing body of National Youth Council and I think we can all see from knowledge from past experience that the general council a lot of young persons will actually attend we probably if we meet a quorum during the general assembly then you do not get as full participation for young people and I mean the problem of participation of clubs on a whole through my district given sports council in Shwezel we had that experience where do we kept calling meetings we kept calling for persons who actually come and get involved and persons who are not showing up business no longer have that zeal to volunteer to get involved so the approach that we use and I agree completely with miss Kyle when she said about the bottoms-up approach the project is we actually started going to the the various clubs going to the communities speaking with the young people and letting them know what's going on because if as a National Youth Council you have to wait for them to come to us they're not serving we're not they're not serving us we are serving them so the onus is on us and as first vice president I will actually try to get my team to actually go out there visit the communities in Shwezel and then read the clubs actually speak to them speak to them about how they can get involved in a community level how they can start voluntary and I can start contributing and I think if we able to do that approach just like the approach that has been taken with the OECS youth strategy actually getting the ideas of young people I think if we start from that point can actually start pulling them in using them as resources in the NYC when we pick out good representatives trying to feed them in various committees in the NYC to help them contribute and to help them basically the ideas feel out more valued than it is already thank you very much candidates you have both submitted manifestos and that entails the plans and proposals that you intend to implement can you select at least two items that you intend to work on a programs or activities that can serve to strengthen a National Youth Council of Central Asia and give us an idea of what it is these two plans and our proposals one of my plans and proposals is to also re-assisting the revamping of the organization we speak now to millennial youth and this is the approach that we need to take the approach where young people have changed and to bring forth innovation and technology those are some of my past projects that I started while I was already you know as a serving as an assistant general secretary to network with ambassadors network with outside entities UNESCO the environmental groups Jeff took pretty much get funding format for my programs which will start at our community level programs for entrepreneurship where we start with our DICs also and to let them you know pretty much have our our young people involved in things that they would want to go and see forward so one of those things would be that to find funding from for programs like entrepreneurship programs for young mothers and to pretty much get back at the grassroots level one of the other programs that I want to see I would also like to get my what I say autism society off the ground to represent them at a different level I want to have also inclusion of our young entrepreneurs and also our young community workers and what we don't like to call an unattached youth get them involved in our programs and in our structures for our organizations so that they can assist the DYSEs they can assist the youth clubs with whatever talents and tap into capabilities that we don't normally see so these are pretty much a few of the programs I have in mind thank you miss Kyle Mr. Alfred well as a first vice president yes the main goal is in terms of international relations but also believe that outside of that first vice president has to be able to contribute so I mean one of the ideas that I'm very passionate about in terms of actually contributing to the National Youth Council I'm a sports person and I love to see sports moving forward and I I always get some sort of chill when I hear person saying all we do in international sports now I'm always quick to tell people people running around the field and playing a game of football is not sports development so what development is so much more than that so one of the programs that actually want to see developed within the National Youth Council is in terms of collaboration with the sporting associations to bring on basically sports that are not part of the mainstream not sports like cricket or football but sports like tennis swimming table tennis bring them at a grassroots level actually speak to the associations to get people because I'm from Shousell and we only have one recognized swimmer in Shousell with Maki Manos I would love to see persons from Shousell actually being interested in playing tennis in playing in doing swimming because these are all Olympic sports and that's actually an opportunity that you can get if you pick them up at a young age to actually help them contribute to you know them being involved in this particular sport so sports like tennis table tennis bring them to the smaller communities tennis has not only have to be for the youth of the north swimming doesn't only have to be for the youth of the north we can bring it to the community like ancillary the communities of Shousell so that is one thing that I want to see done in terms of collaboration with the sporting associations if you can get funding for these grassroots programs that is something that I really want to see enacted and another thing that I'm really passionate about is a big brother big sister program and it has been thrown around here and there but it's about time that somebody takes action because I think we can all agree that one of the major problems that we face right now in terms of is in terms of you've been idle in terms of crime so if you can have the young persons in the community outstanding young persons actually mentor the young persons from the disadvantaged communities they not can go a long way into actually helping to develop the young people from a very early age and I was very happy to hear your time has expired for this particular question at this moment I would like to invite our in-studio audience to pose questions that's our candidates for first vice president of the national youth council of st lusia and we are now going to have a question from miss louis victor who is the immediate past president of the national youth council of st lusia good evening everyone okay mr alfred miss kyle um we've all been in the movement and we all understand what our struggles are some of what has been mentioned is what was constantly highlighted throughout our tenure and administratively in the the last executive there was a bit of unrest in terms of persons always moving on so administratively I would say the the last administration never got to quite settle as a team to get working um miss kyle my first question is to you you spoke of millennial well dealing with millennials we know the situation with our constitution we speak of wanting to engage but my question is strategically and tactically how are we going to engage we speak of social media we are using social media but have we as young people as young governors I should say have we fully understood the power of not just social media but digital media so I pose this question to you both in terms of not what but how are we going to strategically move forward in terms of engagement because we know that nyc's logo tagline is participation peace progress and we if we are honest with ourselves participation has not been what it should be so how are we going to engage to encourage young people to actively participate this is something that has been coming up and we know for quite a while and as a first vice president I would like to introduce to general assembly what my team calls zonal coordinators or zonal leaders under my stewardship this would mean that we have other young leaders separated in four into four zones which would work with the district youth and sports councils and would also work with the groups on the grassroots level this is part also part of our communication or PRO plan because communication and filtering down has always been and quite an issue so in terms of zoning zoning our 19 districts with persons and youth coordinators pretty much or leaders I think this would assist in us getting what we say the disconnect pretty much out of it and to also assist the dysc's assist the grassroots levels to come together and work with the nyc to push programming and to push networking forward and to also make it a hype thing to be back into volunteering so our programming really needs to be on point when it comes to when it comes to our let's say persons who do not really want to be attached to a group but they can give something and they're willing to give back and we have a lot of those people around a lot of young persons who say to you I don't want to necessarily be in a group but I would like to be involved so inclusion would be something that our zoning would assist with community helpers all of those persons would be part of the zoning to create inclusion and to create pretty much what we'd like to see one youth going forward thank you miss kyle mr alfred can you share your sentiments with regards to the question we've proposed okay thank you very much miss do is for the question and actually like the fact that you mentioned about participation and especially in terms of social media because on a professional experience one of the things that has made my organization on a personal level so successful is the use of social media and we always hear that you know we have the technology we have the social media but it's not working it can work it has to be used properly and that is one of the things that has been one of our very strong points if social media is used properly there are the tools that are available to actually get young people to participate you have facebook you have the facebook insights where you can actually see if you post something who is reading the post the other persons are from shu zel from sufre the use of videos to actually target young people because i'm sure that if any of us go to facebook we'll see a paragraph and we'll see a video we'll quicker click on the video than we'll click on the on the long writing i mean that's all things that we can use we can actually try to use the tool um if it means that the nyc executive has to sit down through a course because you have courses on allison you have courses on course sir we can actually learn about social media development and about technology and about actually getting young persons to participate i think if we can use it properly then i see no way in which we cannot target young persons because you have to admit everywhere you go young persons on their mobiles it is easier to try to get them on their phones on whatsapp on instagram instead of actually inviting them to a town hall meeting so it can work we can get young persons to participate but we need to get down to their level and we actually need to use the tools which are available to us and not just use them but learn how to use them properly and i think if we are able to do that properly then we can actually get young persons more involved go out to the various communities take out you know do videos and all these things and like i said even properly i see no reason why it cannot work thank you to you both we are continuing in terms of taking questions from the audience we have had one and in terms of our structure we have four more questions from the audience so i now invite the members of the audience to pose questions to mr. myos alfred and miss kim kyle good afternoon everybody i've been in youth work for the past years and nyc has been absent and i'm saying that basically we do not hear much i'm present i'm presently the president of the baboon youth and sports council and my thing is coming into this new election i'm going to ask have you all looked back on the years as to where nyc was and it is so easy to say we have all of these plans on the table but we also need to be very realistic and like anything else we watch politics or anybody wanting to come forward as to helping quote unquote the youth and embracing the whole volunteer system and all of that but i'm asking both of you what really do you see you guys bringing to the table forget all the we can do this and we can do that let's get down to the bottom line the reality of it is nyc is dead what are you going to do in the next year or two years to actually help us or the youth to realize that there is a body that actually has a louder voice for us and not us continuously doing the work within our community because it's okay to speak about showsel baboonow central cash it's okay to talk about those things but when we speak of nyc we're speaking about senusha and the original so what exactly are you guys going to bring to the table because it will be challenging you understand the funding will not come in the first month for the first day just because you guys have contacts all right so what really are you guys going to put forward and two before i finish both of you guys have your teams the reality is you will not get everybody from your team succeeding the next election so will it be that both of you will go separate ways if let's just say that let's say you were able to get in and you were not able to get in but your president was able to get in at what point we will be coming together for the quote-unquote agenda you've developed thank you thank you very much well thank you well with institutional knowledge you we know nyc has not been where it was but i bring strength to the organization and i also bring knowledge and pretty much a mobilizing person a person who can advocate a person who can speak and who's not afraid to be voiceless when when the time comes for us to rally together and partner for a cause in terms of the of the um what are you saying in terms of the young persons and youth leaders coming together under nyc i went into general assemblies two almost two or three years ago and i did contest for the pyro post but i didn't win and i never stayed far from nyc so i believe whichever one yes we are from different teams but there should be a level of maturity that comes with that and this is what we've been lacking in nyc and i believe whichever one goes in we are both strong leaders we both he has sports i have youth development we both have our strengths no matter who wins i believe we should stay in our communities and to assist the other in terms of whatever they have to do his programs are good mine are good we can still partner because we both as force vice president would hold a committee so we can be a part of each other's committee to push the youth agenda forward so i don't think we should be upset with each other whether we won or didn't last last general assembly i didn't win i stayed close to nyc i left nyc still worked in the background i am still working in the background so no matter what the outcome of this general assembly i continue to pledge my advocacy for youth and whichever person wins thank you miss kyle okay thank you very much for your question and one of the first things that you said was whether or not we'd actually gone back and spoken to persons who had been in the nyc during its heady and actually to get a gist of what nyc was all about when it was at its highest and i remember a couple last week a couple weeks ago when i went to the parliament house during the debate sitting and i we got a small moment to actually sit and speak with one of the founding members of the nyc back in 1985 that is unicelle also served as president and i think that's something that we need to do to actually go back and try to speak with them get advice from them so in terms of that that is something that actually we've already started in terms of what i bring to the table i bring strong leadership from a community level from the national level in terms of my organization on an original level as well and i bring the attitude that everybody no matter who you are has a right a role to play has a very important role to play and i believe in bringing people together and you ask what i can do for you nyc yes nyc is sen lucha but nyc is not the governing body not the main authority of the youth of sen lucha is a general assembly so i need to come to you to find out what you want and see how we can work together to help achieve the goals that you want to achieve and in terms of as well in terms of the collaboration and the teams i've sat down with my team and we've gone through the resumes of the opposing teams and each and every one of them has a fantastic resume they have brilliant programs on a personal level you have persons who've been involved um the general secretary dian fee has been with the nyc for such a long time even when persons have been bailing she's been there mr sidney has his um has been very instrumented in a lot of programs in sen lucha miss kim kyle is no introduction so that's all persons that we can actually help bring in so no matter like miss kyle said i agree for completely that no matter who wins every single person is a resource and a resource that we can use we can use to collaborate so in that case i think miss kyle and i as the vice president we are on very good terms yes we are i don't think that would be much of an issue in terms of collaborative and working together even though our perspective teams do not win thank you to you both and now we find another question from our in-study audience yes sir yeah my question or yeah my question to you is that um we've seen lacking in both um government um other institutions and organizations that um decide and and instill policies right um we've seen a lack of continuation even with our governments they are not talking about plans that we'll hear before and it's not it has died what i want to know is that what do you see or where do you see all the plans what do we do with all the plans that we have voted on um we have put down on people and somehow have virtually shelf where do you see that going where do you see these plans going because there are a lot of plans for revamping of nyc there's lots of plans for the um changing or putting in a new constitution for the nyc there's also um plans for branding the nyc which was spoken of but these plans have not fulfilled or come to fruition um where do you see that going and um what is your take on an advisory body or professional body as a subset of the nyc helping with um the drive of continuation and for professionalism thank you sir well i think mr marshal is talking about the mandate of the last general assembly in terms of revamping the nyc and all of those things were brought up at the last general assembly unfortunately it wasn't able to go through with institutional knowledge and with a backing from nyc i believe i'm knowledgeable enough to assist whichever executive that is coming in so we cannot always go forward without going back first so we must know what existed because we cannot retrain the wheel all of the time we must see what the mandate of the last general assembly was we must also see the mandate the new mandate that will be given on the 27th of may and try to put those things together and push programming and push whatever it is that needs to be done in terms of the revamping of that organization and um pretty much our the youth center that was already put in place by the last executive well pretty much the getting to getting to the bottom of it and um with a first vice president as myself with that knowledge i think i can assist with both the past and the and the present with with the mandates of the last general assembly and and incoming general assembly um so in terms of um policies and stuff that were there before the most that we can do now is to come together form our committees sit together and decide who are where our strengths are and to partner with young people who can push those things forward as young people the most we can do is to do it together thank you very much miss kyle mr alfred okay um i never want to be live in completely starting off on a clean slate where it is in an organization such as the nyc so anybody who gets selected to the nyc we have to sit down with the previous executive find out what programs were they already the stage of development of particular programs and actually getting an idea from them of where certain things stand because it doesn't make sense to start off an organization and just start things completely new not finding out from the previous executive what could have been done or what was close to being done so that is one thing that is very key in terms of liaising with the president of the last youth council we have the president here right now and i i'm pretty sure she'd be very open to you know dialoguing with us and serving in an advisory role as well and other persons of the executive so that is something that is essential really really really essential and in terms of the whole advisory thing my team has actually sat down and the constitution names a couple of committees and i mean to the discretion of the executive you can actually create other committees yourself and we've actually started shortlisting persons in the event that we were to win persons that we can bring in in the capacity to help develop the nyc or to contribute sports there are many resource persons in sports in Saint Lucia that we can actually get to assist on that level international relations pr there are young persons talented young persons in Saint Lucia so it's all about bringing them together the nyc executive cannot do it by themselves we should not try to do it by ourselves but we should try to help pulling and roping the persons who have the experience i spoke recently to the legal advisor for the on the electoral committee brilliant young man i went to school with him i'd like to see a young man like that actually get roped into the nyc in terms of a legal capacity because nyc will face legal issues so it's all about roping the young persons around us and actually getting them to contribute to the organization that we all want to see move forward thank you very much um good afternoon everybody my name is Rijan Montut um first vice president of the gross leave development council and candidate for the running of general secretary for the nyc my question is posed to both candidates given the situations like brexit and donald trump's approach to nationalism what are your views on globalization and do you believe that you for the small island developing state likes in lucia can actually benefit from organizations like caracom and the wcs and how would you use your posts if you were to be first vice president um in charge of international relations to that benefit of the thank you miss Montut miss kyle in terms of globalization this is where we bring in and partner with youth organizations like we world assembly of youth this is an organization that is that i came across during my my own time in the u.s with youth to youth and this is an organization that brings youth together and we works with with nyc's so an organization like that would really assist us in terms of partnering with all kinds of global issues environmental issues so ways is a one of the networking companies or organizations that i would really like to see partner with us to assist us with all of those programs and initiatives thank you okay in terms of globalization one of the mandates of the first vice president of the nyc is actually to keep abreast of international developments that are affecting us miss montut you mentioned donald trump's approach on nationalism and in terms of brexit and i mean all of these have whether it be directly or indirectly some part to play in you know a little small island nation such as st lucer and the youth of st lucer do have a view on it so as first vice president when these matters come up it's all about dialogue with the young people what do you think of that what do you put them in together into a group setting to find out their views on it get it televised on ntn where you can actually have a young moderator sitting down with young persons to discuss these issues because whether we want to believe it or not they actually do affect us in one way or another so in terms of that that is something that we can take and in terms of actually the what we can gain from organizations such as caracom and and the ocs we are all small island nations in the caracom and in the ocs and one of the things that we have in common is what affects young persons in one country is normally what affects young persons in another country our problem of unemployment may not be unique to just st lucer is unique to other countries of the caribbean as well so i think in that scenario what we need to do is to network with the youth leaders from the other countries i was in anguilla recently and actually quite liked one of the programs when it dealt with entrepreneurship which is something that they adopted from dominica so if we are having an issue with solving our problem of unemployment in st lucer why can't we network with other youth leaders in the caracom countries in the ocs countries to find out what's working for them and to find out if we implement it on a local level whether or not it will work for us so yes miss monton i do believe that there is some benefit that can begin from organizations like that but i didn't believe it all comes down to the networking and whether or not we can you know help the young persons in the caribbean not just them helping us but whether or not we can help them as well thank you to you both and for our final question from our in studio audience okay good evening good evening my question focuses more on the issue of international relations the nyc receives a subvention of 42 000 which we have hood complaints that okay it's not enough and there is a need to raise more funding or raise more resources money is not the only thing you need but only tech also technical resources so in your plans or do you have any ideas of how you can proceed with building relationships that can generate resources for the nyc thank you mr ferdinand as immediate past assistant general secretary i began partnering with ambassadors during my tenure and i was able to get get through with some ambassadors to assist in funding some programs i started with a cultural program so in terms of funding i think ambassadors on an island basis we can target them also when it comes to grants and and stuff like that we look at at UNESCO we look at there is what you call the australian grant funding they are also a youth organization which is prepared to assist youth around the world in terms of funding for projects so these are the persons that we can partner with UNESCO and UNDP all of those organizations we can partner with them for funding for our programs and whatever else the nyc needs to push forward okay in terms of the funding i do agree mr ferdinand that 42 000 is not a lot of money we need to get the grant funding coming in to fund the projects of the national youth council and one of the things that would be key as part of an executive is the ability to actually source these types of funding so in that scenario you actually need persons who are experienced in writing proposals for grants and that is something that i actually been training writing proposals for grants i've applied for grants myself and other persons on my team i've actually had the experience of getting the knowledge and the experience in writing proposals for grants and that is something that would be key as we look to get funding for the nyc and there are organizations out there a lot of international organizations um you have right here in the OECS there's the um cbu the business unit of the OECS was staged in nomenica they actually give funding technical assistance to young persons involved in entrepreneurship you write down the proper proposal you know they can actually get you started there was recently the OECS 30 for 30 which was started by the organizational part of which is OECS where they help speak out young persons in the OECS region who actually have entrepreneurial ideas to actually help give them a start so i think that that is something that we can tap into we can tap into the various like miss kyle said the um various ambassadors we can tap into various um international organizations that offer such funding because forty thousand dollars for all the young people didn't say that is not enough we need to get something really we need to get something on the board and i mean it will not happen overnight we might write one time it might get rejected but we have to write again we have to be persistent because at the end of the day we have to try to justify to the young persons at the next general assembly what we did in order to live up to the mandate that they set for us at the general assembly thank you very much as we bring this first vice-presidential debate to a close why should a young person vote miss kim kyle as first vice-president or vote for nias alfred as first vice-president of the national youth council of centlutia with institutional knowledge experience and the determination to push you forward i believe youth in centlutia should look at persons with long-term involvement and grassroots grounding we vote for kim kyle who is a determined person who is a leader within the community and who's also somebody who can assist in pushing the nyc forward thank you okay before i ask the young persons in centlutia would write to them why they should vote for me and to let the young persons in centlutia know that i decided to run for the nyc because i was not in a personal capacity satisfied with the level of representation that was provided to young people and i could have gone for any post within the nyc i have five and a half years of experience in banking i could have gone up for the post of treasurer but i decided to go for the post that more closely fitting with my experience on an international level on a regional level in terms of networking with young persons from across the caribbean internationally as well so a young person in centlutia can feel confident in voting for me because they know that i bring fresh approach i bring new ideas i have the experience at all different levels from the grassroots up to the international level and i can tell them with assurity that if they vote for me and they vote for my team it will provide a level of representation that has not already been seen in youth leadership in centlutia and it's not just a matter of words we can actually back up the words with what we've been doing in the past and what we intend to continue doing through if we read our manifestos you'll see our ideas so it's a matter of continuing what we've already been doing on a personal level but in the capacity of the nyc and actually trying to push that organization forward thank you very much miss kyle and mr alfred i believe that you have both articulated your proposals your ideas quite eloquently and in terms of the points which have been made i think it is quite substantive and i believe that both of you are well pleased to make a significant contribution as it relates to syvenas first vice president of the national youth council of centlutia and i'd like to thank you for allowing for the young people of centlutia to get to know you better and the plans that you have in terms of what you would look to implement as a first vice president also i would like to take opportunity to remind the young people of centlutia that the elections for the national youth council of centlutia have been slated for the 27th of may at the financial administrative centre and it will commence at 9 a.m and so we are asking young people on behalf of the national youth council of centlutia to make a special effort to represent their respective clubs at the general assembly i would also like to express my deepest gratitude to our in-study audience for the questions that you posed and to the viewing public thank you very much for sharing this time with us thank you to everyone good evening