Education pulling youths away from VI & Church – Dr Pickering
Dr Pickering made the remarks on November 16, 2022, during an election campaign rally while addressing the people of North Sound on Virgin Gorda.
Remarking that it was “time to reset”, the former legislator said recently he was having a discussion with a pastor from the VG community and one of the issues they lamented on, was that the local church is suffering over the loss of youths in the congregation.
He said this situation is not unique to North Sound, as young people are leaving the church all across the VI. The former legislator used the Long Look community on Tortola as an example, “The young people are not coming to church, they are dropping out,” he said.
Youths not returning after studies - Dr Pickering.
Dr Pickering said one of the reasons for this is that youths are leaving to study abroad and not returning, “We are losing a lot of our young people because they are going away to study and they are not coming back, that is not good for us,” he added.
“We have got to find ways to ensure that when our young people finish school, we educate them, we go out of our way to send them to college to get an education… and not benefiting from them. We want to benefit from them!” he said.
Dr Pickering pointed out that persons must therefore create an environment that would encourage youths to not only return to the territory and the church, but to also build a family in the VI.
According to him, one of the ways to do this is to build a better public-private partnership, “We have some of the wealthiest people around us here [North Sound and Virgin Gorda] we must engage them in ideas on how best to create opportunities,” he said.
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24 Responses to “Education pulling youths away from VI & Church – Dr Pickering”
Not because the youths have. More opportunities, and are better skillfully educated than those of time past do mean that Spiritual education has lost its valuable necessity, to help build better relationships among our various demographics (age difference) of our country's people of the BVI.
In order for crimes to reduce in area dramatically in the BVI, Godly Spiritual principles must first increase, mark my prophetic words.
Every nation, or people, the the BVI included, that has lost the fear of the Lord can be assured that worst than the covid-19 pandemic, worst than hurricane Erma's desastrous effects will come, sooner or later. No among money nor educational standards will be able to change, and avoid the enevitible, that will surely happen in its future time.
When local people stop building houses for themselves there is a problem. Look around! Home many NEW single family homes are locals building? Not many that I see.
A man gets money here he builds an apartment building. Who lives in these places? Not locals. Low income workers mainly. The local man is chasing this money. MONEY MONEY MONEY. That's seems to be all that the BVI thinks about.
We need to give these young people a home. Figure a way to get them land and afford to build a Single Family Home. Yes - single family. A bunch of those and you have a community. If you have a community people don't leave.
All these government land giveaways end up with apartment buildings and no local family homes. I don't see this in other Caribbean islands on the scale I do in the BVI. We are leading a poor example for our youth, that's why they are leaving. You teach youth to just care about money, and wonder why he leaving?
Pass some laws. Make banks loan money to locals wanting to build Single Family Homes. They will want to stay.
The seed refers to the youths. True, education is a necessary must thing in order to be able to survive in this world. But to disregard righteous Godly principles is biggest mistake that humans can make.
Whether or not you will or me will vote for Dr. Kedrick Pickering is not the core message of the issue.
People in every country of this world encourage education. Without it we will not be able to keep pace with the fastly needed changes. Education is a tool tha ensures that the standard of living improve in every needed area to benefit people's lives.
It is truly evil that many selfish church pastors, spiritual book writers have, and are misusing biblical teaching for their personal selfish ambition, but so politicians, when most of them attended funerals in church gathering buildings.
Youths are not discourage from strong drinks consumption, youths of young adults age are not being discourage from attending Strip Clubs, and from participating in many other human degradation activities, such as indecent behaviour in the street during festival celebrations, but for many, as soon as Dr. Kedrick Pickering mentioned attending church, and other things that will he us build a better future for our country's people, many negative minded persons, rather than seeing some good in what he has spoken, see only evil. Are we sure that we know the things that will help us build a better future for our people? Sad, but the majority of us at this time don't. However, all is not lost. Let us not quit trying to improve. We can, but not without God's guidance, facts.
Vote you conscience. Like our dislike.
Church is different. Organised religion can be toxic. Ultra wealthy pastors demanding tithes is not "Christianity"!
always say; once them gets kicked out of political office suddenly they have all the answers
you had the opportunity for so many years to do what you speaking about now
give someone else an opportunity to fail
i agreed with your comment. indeed, politics call for visionary leaders, what he is speaking about is foundation that should have been laid at the start of his political career. Countries in the Caribbean far supersede the terriority. For example Cuba has one of the best doctoral program to ensure most of it citizen remains in the country, compare to BVI , I am not sure what is in place, if anything. Barbados, ensure their citizen are cared for in emergencies, of health, finance , and social issues. Now, BVI have COI to tell them how to support their citizen who has fall victim of the pandemic and hurricanes. Educationally, this doctor should have gotten scholarship to help the students in the same field or other fields of studies. He could have install in his manefesto, seven ways to keep youth perspective alive to progress the next generation. Attending church does not change anything for a person, it just label the person as a church goer. Getting involved counts. Walwyn has brought to the High School the idea of involving children into Service Leadership, many parent was unsure if they should accept it, until they realized that community service in their own country help them build that capacity of confidence with the social aspect of their lives. I will not vote for him, as the twenty years in politics shows little or nothing for those who are working in the minimum wage level. Eliminating poverty , paying a living wage should have been his focus, unless he is afraid of the business community. Engaging young people in skills, that they can be paid for at a young age will help to decrease crime, get them active , and they results should be documented. The one thousand job idea, will always be a failure , if the job creation to earn money is not relevant. Don't give a man part time bread and expect him to function on it, he needs bread everyday.