(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Guyana’s Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport the Dr the Honourable Frank Anthony has urged the youth of the Region to use edutainment as a means of challenging the difficult issues that they face.

Dr Anthony was speaking on Saturday 23 August at the opening ceremony of the Edutainment Symposium, which forms part of CARIFESTA X that opened in Georgetown, Guyana on Friday night. The one-day Symposium held at the International Convention Centre, Liliendaal, just outside Georgetown, was staged with the collaboration of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Guyana’s Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and the President’s Youth Award Republic of Guyana (PYARG). Edutainment as defined by the opening speaker, Mr Al Creighton is the use of entertainment as a tool to educate.

Dr Anthony cited the success of the use of edutainment in the drive to limit the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus and suggested that other challenges such as teenage pregnancy, youth empowerment, unemployment and substance abuse could benefit from a similar approach.

The Minister said he was certain that young people were not the problem as many have put forward. Instead, he said, they were the solutions to the problems as they had the drive and ideas. He urged the youth present, from The Bahamas, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago to use the symposium to share best practices in edutainment. Dr Anthony said that they should use Saturday’s opportunity to perfect their techniques and also to arrive at a Caribbean position to present to the World Edutainment Conference scheduled for New Delhi, India in 2009.

Mr Harold Robinson, Director of the UNFPA sub-Regional Office for the Caribbean told the gathering that they should use the example of the young Caribbean athletes at the Beijing Olympiad as an indication of what hard work and commitment could achieve. He said they were a fine example of the potential that lies within Caribbean youth and advised that that potential cried out for inclusion in the planning and execution of programmes for attaining sustainable development in the Region.

He said edutainment had shown the way with respect to presenting information in a manner appealing to young people and urged that the art forms should be used to address the concerns related to sustainable development.

The programme began with song, dance, poetry and drama performed by the Region’s youth including a stirring performance by Lisa Paul, the young Guyanese singer who performs the CARIFESTA theme song.