Twenty-five Indigenous youth from Orealla and Siparuta graduated Tuesday from a civic leadership programme that saw them design and implement their own community solution to drug and substance abuse.
The programme, run by the Guyana Center for Civic Engagement (GYCCE) with support from the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, is called Article 13 in Practice: Youth Participation in Action, and concluded with a ceremony at the Orealla ICT Hub.
Rather than being assigned a project, participants identified their own community’s most pressing challenge through dialogue and consensus-building, selecting drug and substance abuse as their focus. Volunteer teams subsequently visited Orealla Primary School and Siparuta Primary School to deliver educational sessions encouraging younger students to make positive life choices, and mounted awareness flyers throughout both villages.
The graduation also marked the unveiling of two public awareness billboards, one in each village, designed with direct input from participants to promote drug prevention and responsible citizenship.
During closing evaluations, participants pledged to become more involved in village governance, including attending community meetings, supporting their Village Councils and promoting a zero-tolerance approach to drug use.
The programme was led by GYCCE Director Dr Deodat Persaud, a member of the 2024 John McCain Global Leaders Cohort, who secured funding through the programme’s Impact Fund. It was facilitated by Persaud, Narima Alli and Marcel Chester, with Jonathan Persaud volunteering during the graduation ceremony.
“What impressed me most was that these young people did not wait for someone else to solve a problem,” Persaud said. “They identified the challenge themselves, developed a solution, and implemented it.”
GYCCE thanked Village Captain Laurence Vandenburgh, the Village Councils of Orealla and Siparuta, and both primary schools for their support, and said it intends to expand similar civic initiatives to other Indigenous and rural communities.
The initiative also drew on constitutional literacy training, with sessions covering civic engagement, dialogue, ethical leadership, conflict resolution and volunteerism, in addition to community action planning. The programme began on 30 May 2026 at the Orealla ICT Hub, bringing together young people from both villages to build their understanding of participatory democracy and their role in local decision-making.
Reflecting on the initiative, Persaud said Article 13 of the Constitution underscores that democracy is strongest when citizens actively participate in shaping decisions that affect their lives, describing the participants’ independent problem-solving as leadership in action reflecting the values of the McCain Institute and the John McCain Global Leaders Program.
GYCCE said the support provided through the John McCain Global Leaders Program Impact Fund enabled Indigenous youth in Guyana to translate constitutional principles into meaningful, lasting community action.
