Even as youth programs in the Haynesville St James community of Barbados rack up impressive wins across cultural, sporting and academic spaces, one critical gap continues to hold back further progress: a permanent, fully operational community centre. That is the clear message from Peter Skeete, founder and president of the Haynesville Youth Club, who made the appeal during an ongoing cultural exchange trip to Suriname with 18 members of the organization.
Skeete began by welcoming recent upgrades to the local Barbados Police Service outpost, a facility that has been the backbone of community organizing for two decades. Calling the renovation a positive step forward, he highlighted the decades-long collaborative partnership between local law enforcement and the Haynesville community. For 20 years, the community police outpost has been integral to the growth of local youth initiatives—including the youth club’s signature drumming programs, which got their start within the outpost’s walls.
Skeete also paid public tribute to the late Constable Mark Wood, whom he remembered as one of the most forward-thinking community policing officers Barbados has ever had. Wood left a lasting mark on the community through his unwavering support for youth development and his deep investment in local cultural initiatives. Beyond the space the outpost provided, Skeete added, the Barbados Police Force has also donated more than 90 percent of the drums the youth club uses for its programs, underscoring just how central the facility has been to the club’s ability to operate.
“Without the usage of that post, I do not know where we would be, because we do not have a community centre,” Skeete explained. Currently, the only public gathering spaces available to the community are the Melbourne Cricket Club pavilion and the Desmond Haynes Sports Complex at Holder’s Hill. Both were built primarily for cricket activities, Skeete noted, and are not available for regular, broad community use by groups like the youth club.
While the return of a consistent police presence to the renovated outpost has been widely celebrated, Skeete pushed back against the assumption that the renewed deployment is a response to growing crime in the area. On the contrary, he emphasized, the community’s consistent youth programming has driven down delinquent and antisocial behavior among local young people, a trend that law enforcement has formally acknowledged. “For a number of years we were able to provide meaningful opportunities for our young people that actually limited their participation in deviant and antisocial behaviour,” he said.
Skeete stressed that the role of police in the community extends far beyond crime response and arrests. A proactive, consistent police presence that collaborates with local organizers, he argued, is key to keeping the community stable and supporting the positive changes that have already taken root. He called for continued cross-sector collaboration between the youth club and local law enforcement to build on the area’s recent gains.
Despite these significant wins for the community, the lack of a dedicated community centre remains a major barrier to long-term growth. The Haynesville Youth Club has already compiled an impressive track record of success: it produced the most recent winner of the prestigious Richard Stoute Teen Talent competition, and claimed four consecutive championship titles in the Ministry of Youth’s national block draughts tournament. Local athletes from the community have excelled across nearly every major sporting discipline, Skeete noted—yet there is no permanent facility to nurture emerging young talent.
Skeete suggested that the club’s outsize success despite severe space limitations may have led local decision-makers to underestimate the urgency of the community’s request for a centre. “Because of the success there probably is the belief that we don’t need one… if you can be so successful with a small space, then why should we need a facility?” he questioned.
The youth club has already stepped up to invest in shared public space, Skeete noted: the organization contributed financially to the recent repainting of the police outpost, and collaborated with the National Cultural Foundation to create custom artwork for the facility during the recent CARIFESTA regional cultural festival.
Reiterating his call for targeted infrastructure investment, Skeete emphasized that Haynesville’s track record of excellence in sports, culture and education proves the community is ready for a larger, dedicated facility. “Haynesville is an outstanding community… we really need a much larger space,” he said.