Letter: Purpose-built youth centre

Dear Editor, Minister for Youth Vaine “Mac” Mokoroa, in this writer’s view, needs to place his passport in the office safe and leave it there until there is established on Rarotonga, the first purpose-built youth centre.

And no, not the likes of the sad “Youth Hub” portable box adjacent the courthouse that reflects just how much our ‘leaders’ really care about our troubled youth that are so much in the news of late.
The prototype youth centre needs to be of generous size. It needs to be staffed with a live-in Pa Metua or Pa Metua couple. It needs to have a couple of beds to emergency-shelter a young person running from domestic or other violence. It needs to have a full, well-equipped kitchen, built tough. There needs to be always healthy food in the commercial size fridge including a never empty section of ice cold nu. The furniture needs to be built-in and indestructible, using local timbers and local carpenters.
It needs to have a variety of quality (not Chinese junk) features including a pool table, air hockey, table tennis. The space needs to be alcohol and video-game free with the only screen a big TV for watching sports. In lieu of ‘screens’ there needs to be carving tools, hobby tools, art supplies, drums, ukulele, and local artists volunteering to teach.
And Mac, you need to be in that centre, at a minimum of one long evening a week, volunteering your time, actually mentoring our youth. You might even learn something in the process.
The land can’t be a problem, you’ve got under-used Crown land and you’ve got major landowners who would be clamouring to give you a 60-year lease. Are we talking about a half-million dollars to set up and maybe half that much a year to operate? Let’s hope so. And let’s hope that this government, forever promoting tourism and seabed mining that is supposed to be enriching us all, will get this prototype up and running with some of that money that never seems to ‘trickle down’ to the real needs of this community.
Come on Mac, surprise us all.

(Name and address supplied)