The Progressive Youth Organisation (PYO) – the youth arm of the ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) – is looking to grow its membership across Guyana.
Currently, the PYO is hosting a series of youth camp throughout Guyana. The most recent activity was held on Friday at Diamond on the East Bank of Demerara, where scores of young people participated in the event. Earlier in the week, another youth camp was hosted at Enterprise, East Coast Demerara (ECD).
Prior to this, the PPP youth arm was in Region One (Barima-Waini), where, according to General Secretary Dr Bharrat Jagdeo, the party is looking to boost its youth membership by at least 900.
Last weekend, Jagdeo attended the PYO youth camp held at the Moruca Sub-District in the Barima-Waini region.
According to the PPP General Secretary, upwards of 300 youths from the Moruca sub-district joined the PYO and this number is expected to grow when similar camps are held in the Matakai sub-district next Thursday and then at Mabaruma the following day.
“So, we anticipate about 900 young people from Region One [to join the PYO] … about 300 from each sub-district. Maybe Matakai would have a little less but Mabaruma would have more, and not all of them – the members – would get to come to the meetings because it’s a representative group. We can’t bring everyone out from the villages,” Jagdeo explained during his weekly press conference on Thursday at the party’s Freedom House head office on Robb Street in Georgetown.
This figure is expected to further grow when similar exercises are held in all the regions across the country.
Only last week, the PPP General Secretary told reporters that the PYO member was boosted with more than 600 new members from Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) and several hundred more from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam).
“These are kids from every community and from every race… Our party is the only multi-racial party in this country and the largest Amerindian party too because we have a massive amount of members who are Amerindians. The last congress, one-third of the delegates were Amerindians who came to the [PPP’s] Congress. We have in our leadership, a number of Amerindians,” he stated.
According to Jagdeo, the PPP is working to build its future cohort of leaders by not only targeting youths from across the country but also prepare them to takeover leadership roles both within the party and at a national level as well.
“At the last Delegates Congress when I spoke, I said by the time we have our next congress, we will have a 5000-strong youth movement all in line with preparing the next generation of PPP leaders who will emerge in the next, maybe, 10 years or so as the leadership of this party and the country. And we are working to prepare them,” the General Secretary stated.
The PPP’s Congress, which is due every two years, was last held in May of this year saw several new and young members elected to the 40-member Central Committee of the party.
