Workshop participants in the Drill Hall at the RCMP Training Academy (Depot).
The Youth Leadership and Project Development Workshop, which was held earlier this month, was well attended and enjoyed by all.
The RCMP National Youth Services team from Ottawa arranged for 19 youth between the ages of 13 and 18, along with RCMP officers from across Canada, to meet in Regina at the RCMP Training Academy (Depot) for the workshop.
18-year-old, Portage la Prairie resident, Nathan Utioh, was nominated and then chosen from Manitoba to attend the workshop along with Cst. Shannon Neff from the Portage la Prairie RCMP.
Supporting youth is one of the RCMP’s priorities. It is important to not only give the youth an opportunity to voice their opinions and or concerns, but also to follow up on these things. This workshop provided a great opportunity for this to happen.
During their time at Depot, the youth were given an inside look at some aspects of the training that RCMP cadets go through.
Throughout the workshop, the youth participants were asked to identify issues affecting youth within their community. An eye opener to the youth, as well as the RCMP officers, was that even with the diverse, cultural, economic and family backgrounds of each youth from the communities across Canada the identified issues affecting the youth in their communities were very similar. A general consensus with the youth participants was that within their communities, the issue of alcohol and drug abuse is a serious concern that is affecting youth. Individually and collaboratively they came up with action plans to bring back to their communities to help assist in addressing these issues. Although the identified issues were similar, each action plan was very different as each was created by each individual youth with their own personality and views on how to begin tackling these issues.
The hope is that throughout the next year, these action plans created by and led by each youth, will roll out in their community with the support of the RCMP mentor that attended the workshop with them.
