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FORWARDING OPERATING BASE JACKSON, Helmand province, Afghanistan - More than 85 children from around Sangin attended the Sangin Youth Outreach Shura held by Female Engagement Teams assigned to 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, at Forward Operating Base Jackson, Aug. 17.
“It is important to work with the youth of Sangin because just like the kids in the U.S., they want to grow up to be something,” said Sgt. Juanita Towns, the FET 13 team leader. “So it is just best that we try to start them off on the right path at a young age vice letting them join the (insurgency) now.”
When on patrol with the battalion’s infantry squads the team members spread the word about the youth shuras and have recently had Afghan Uniformed Police officers help them in their endeavor to reach out to the children of Sangin.
The children, ages 1-14, were split into three groups in which they participated in age-appropriate informative stations and activities. This enabled the FETs to reach out to each age group more effectively, and is modeled after the cultural breakdown the children often gravitate towards on their own.
“It’s the first activity in Sangin for the kids, focused on the kids,” said FET member Lance Cpl. Jacqueline Veres. “So we are just trying to get them to see that we are here to help them, they can come to us and they can trust us.”
“The first one we had was a hygiene shura. The shura that we just had was a healthcare, education and activities shura,” said Towns, a Richmond, Va., native. “They played soccer, they did their time tables and the smaller kids just played with educational toys.”
With a literacy rate of seven percent in Sangin, District Governor Mohammad Sherrif has recognized the need for education here. Through his outreach shuras to the community he impresses on the people the need for the children of Sangin to become educated so one day they will be able to assume leadership roles within the up and coming Sangin government. Sherrif realizes and tells the people “children are the future of Sangin.”
“Children are the innocent ones in most cases,” said Towns, a parent herself. “If they are not educated there is just a repetitive cycle of insurgency and drugs. If you educate them when they are small there is an opportunity for them to be better than that and do positive things.”
Until last year, these children had not been afforded opportunities to break the trend and reach new levels. However teaching children how to do this is a challenging task since they lack the focus levels of adults. So the team had to mix things up to captivate their young audience and keep them interested in the shura.
“We know that they have a short attention span and if we talk to them for an hour like we do with the women then we are not going to get anything accomplished,” explained Towns. “If we have different activities and different things for them to do, they are going to participate, we are going to hold their attention longer and they are going to come back.”
Sometimes when the children do come back to the gates of the base they are looking for free hand outs and naturally are not interested in discussion of long term solutions. Other times the children show up wanting just to spend time with the teams. This requires the engagement teams to improvise and make the best of each situation.
“Even in between shuras we go to the gate and have 20 to 30 kids wanting to just come and talk to us,” said Veres a Canton, Ga., native. “We don’t really have anything planned sometimes, but we will just sit down and hold a mini-shura.”
The youth shuras in Sangin will continue to further expand their horizons to a new way of life that breaks the trend that plagues the region. In short, the activities give the youth something better, which is important to developing and educating the next generation of citizens and leaders in Sangin.
Youth shuras take place in several locations across Helmand province including the districts of Musa Qal’eh, Now Zad, Garmsir and Marjah.
“I think as soon as we stop having youth shuras we will see more insurgent activity, because we have actually given them something to look forward to every two weeks,” said Towns. “If they didn’t have that outreach on life then they would just do something bad that we are not ready to take the fall for.”
First Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, is currently assigned to Regimental Combat Team 8, 2nd Marine Division (Forward), which heads Task Force Leatherneck. The task force serves as the ground combat element of Regional Command (Southwest) and works in partnership with the Afghan National Security Forces and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to conduct counterinsurgency operations. The unit is dedicated to securing the Afghan people, defeating insurgent forces, and enabling ANSF assumption of security responsibilities within its area of operations in order to support the expansion of stability, development and legitimate governance.
| Date Taken: | 08.19.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 08.19.2011 15:05 |
| Story ID: | 75645 |
| Location: | FORWARDING OPERATING BASE JACKSON, HELMAND PROVINCE,, AF |
| Web Views: | 815 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Youth Shuras: Breaking the trend in Sangin, by Sgt Benjamin Crilly, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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