Youth club, sports engage Mineral Heights' youngsters

With younger persons, in their teens up to mid-20s, frequently figuring in the crime statistics, experts agree that engaging that age cohort is the key to keeping any community peaceful and progressive.

Mineral Heights, Clarendon, accepts that argument and keeps its many young people engaged through sports and the police youth club.

Andrenne Burrell is busy making a poster in the Mineral Heights Community Development Office when The Sunday Gleaner sees her on Thursday afternoon.

She is scheduled for a meeting later that afternoon and the public relations officer for the Mineral Heights Police Youth Club seems to have a packed schedule.

As does the club in general and it seems that they do not 'play around'. Burrell says the club meets at the Mineral Heights Primary School on Wednesday evenings at 7:30 and has a regular attendance of 30 persons, from a general membership of 65.

Boys Intrigued

That includes a number of boys, and Burrell smiles as she says: "I think it was the skirt tails that attracted them, but when they came and saw what we were doing they got intrigued and stayed nonetheless."

The 'play' - a games evening - is not a huge factor in the club. Discussions - sex, crime, managing the recession, dealing with stress - are, and Burrell says that the police are very active in the club's activities.

Burrell glows in describing the club as "amazing" and says "all of our members are currently involved in school". Also "volunteerism is encouraged, a whole lot". The club is trying to get registered, with the intention of getting sponsorship from Digicel and the National Housing Trust.

Nadine Sharpe manages the netball team and is also sports coordinator for Mineral Heights. She points out that there is only one multi-purpose court in Clarendon and it cannot hurt that it is in Mineral Heights. The Jamalco open league is held there on Sundays, then on Wednesdays the parish's primary and all-age schools have their turn.

Mineral Heights' netball team is named 'Optimist', and that is not only the name of a service club, but seems to reflect an outlook. Sharpe says "One of the uses of netball was to get the girls off the streets. I notice it gets the boys off the streets too."

The football and netball programmes target the 13-28-year-olds, the basketball goes further up the age ladder, and there is also a cricket team, all coming together to keep not only the players active, but also the spectators engaged.

-M.C.