CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Come next week Tuesday, Antigua and Barbuda will host the Second Meeting of the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) Technical Working Group (TWG) on Preventing Crime by Focusing on At Risk Youths and Vulnerable Populations.

The TWG is one of the four Working Groups under the CBSI which includes CARICOM, the Dominican Republic and the United States. This Working Group has been established to advise on the development of cross-cutting, comprehensive, and regional approaches to crime prevention with a particular focus on Education, Workforce Development, Civic Participation and Juvenile Justice Sector Reform.

The two-day Meeting which is being convened by the CARICOM Secretariat with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will take place under the theme: Building effective and sustainable partnerships for crime prevention. It will bring together representatives from the public and private sectors and civil society of CARICOM and the Dominican Republic as well as representatives from the United States State Department, USAID and International Partners to share experiences and best practices of government, private sector and civil society partnerships to reduce youth crime and violence.

It is anticipated that at the end of the meeting all partners would go away with sound ideas on how they can forge partnerships and engage stakeholders in implementing crime prevention strategies and projects. The meeting will also initiate dialogue with international partners, with a view to developing a harmonized coordinating mechanism for crime and violence initiatives targeting at-risk youth.

The first meeting of the Technical Working Group for Preventing Crime by Focusing on Vulnerable Youth and at-Risk Populations was convened by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Barbados in April of last year.