More than 4,000 youngsters are expected to participate in this year’s Royal Bahamas Police Force Summer Camp which gets underway on Monday, Superintendent of Police Stephen Dean announced yesterday.

The camp, now into its 21st year, will provide various activities aimed at moulding the participants into productive citizens.

“This is one of our crime prevention tools because in the commissioner’s policy it talks about working with young people and this is an excellent example of working with young people,” Supt. Dean said. “During the course of the camp, we will be catering to the whole man, so to speak. So there will be spiritual, physical, mental and social application during the camp.”
The camp welcomes participants between ages eight-years-old to 17-years-old who will attend daily sessions from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

“There will be music training, basketball camps and we even intend to take these young people into the various media houses so they can see behind the scenes how a story is put together and makes it on television or in the newspaper,” Supt. Dean said.
The government has hired more than 50 college students who will work as facilitators at the camp and help to mentor the students.

Keaton Walkine, a theology major at American Baptist College in Nashville, Tennessee, said he is happy to have the opportunity to work with the youngsters and to perhaps be a positive role model for them.

“This is one of my passions, to do whatever I can to turn the lives around of young people, particularly young men,” he said.
“Not a lot of young people have good role models and when somebody can look at another individual who is too far in age from them it can give them inspiration,” said Deshontae Grant, a student at St. Mary’s College. “I just want to inspire them to do well and do their best.”