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As Caribbean communities across The Bahamas grapple with deepening socioeconomic instability, a prominent local nonprofit supporting vulnerable youth is reporting a dramatic spike in demand for its services – driven almost entirely by word-of-mouth referrals from at-risk children themselves.

Lend A Hand Bahamas, a grassroots organization focused on lifting up vulnerable families and children, has recorded what co-founder Shelagh Farrington calls a “great increase” in young people seeking support over recent months. What makes this trend particularly striking is the complete lack of formal marketing or advertising for the group’s programs: existing participants are actively recruiting other children in crisis to join, a phenomenon Farrington describes simply as “our kids recruit for us.”

In an interview Friday on the sidelines of the soft pre-launch for the organization’s new Culinary Centre in Nassau, Farrington explained that out-of-school periods have seen an especially sharp flow of new referrals, with many adolescents bringing peers and family members to the program out of urgent fear for their safety. She recalled one particularly harrowing case from the previous year, where a teen pleaded for Lend A Hand to accept their friend, warning the child might not survive another two weeks without the organization’s support.

Farrington pulled back the curtain on the devastating living conditions many of these families face, shedding light on a hidden housing crisis that has yet to become a central issue in the country’s upcoming general election. Stories of systemic instability abound: Farrington described mothers sleeping in parked cars outside public laundromats while guarding their young children and infants through the night, forcing exhausted parents to try to catch up on rest while working during the day, with nowhere safe to leave children under five years old. She highlighted the case of a 14-year-old competitive athlete who spent more than a year living out of a vehicle alongside his mother and siblings, noting that housing instability has sparked cascading mental health crises across communities, from rising household stress and anger to unaddressed psychological challenges.

With a national general election approaching, Farrington is calling on all political candidates to confront the growing unmet need for affordable housing and social support for low-income Bahamian families. “There are some huge challenges we’re not really talking about in this country because once you start talking about them you have to address them,” she said. “My question is, we got an upcoming election. What is the plan for the little people that live in these communities, whether it’s the grandmothers, the mothers, the aunties, the fathers, because they have nowhere to live.”

Amid this growing demand, Lend A Hand is moving forward with a key expansion of its services: the new Culinary Centre on Hay Street, a project designed to expand economic and educational opportunities for vulnerable families. Developed over three and a half years in a donated building, the facility has raised roughly $100,000 in funding from corporate and private donors, and is set to open its doors in June to host a summer camp program for at-risk youth.

The new centre will house the organization’s first fully operational commercial kitchen for its culinary arts training program, complementing existing offerings at its Lewis Street location that include STEM education, electrical trades training, and adult literacy classes. The project has drawn significant support from international partners, including US-based education technology firm Edmentum, which contributed $30,000 in funding and deployed roughly 60 company employees to assist with construction and setup of the new space.

Edmentum CEO Jamie Candee emphasized that the company’s investment reflects a core commitment to reciprocal giving for communities that host corporate gatherings. “Like many companies in the United States, we fly around the world. We go to these beautiful properties, like sandals and all the other properties that you have here on the island. We have margaritas. We enjoy the beautiful food here,” Candee said. “But most US companies don’t do what this team did today. They enjoy your land, your food, your drinks, and then they leave and they go back to the United States, not Edmentum. What this team, these high performers, who could have chosen to spend all of the days on the beach, they chose to come here and give back to this community.”

Another major partner, the Sandals Foundation, has also backed Lend A Hand’s expanding community work: the foundation has invested $95,000 in a hydroponics agriculture training program for local families and contributed an additional $50,000 to general community development initiatives. US Ambassador to The Bahamas Herschel Walker attended the pre-launch event, highlighting the power of cross-sector collaboration to address persistent social challenges. “The reason I say that is because I stand before you and tell you that it takes a village,” Walker said. “Edmentum is doing a village. You’re bringing people together that can solve the problems we need solved.”

On March 21, a youth-led entrepreneurship group from Grand Bahama turned a simple idea into a meaningful bridge-building event, bringing community members and law enforcement closer together. The group, GB Shipyard N.A.V.Y. Achievers, is a student company affiliated with Junior Achievement Bahamas, and it launched its initiative “Serving Breakfast to Those Who Serve Us” at the Royal Bahamas Police Force Canteen located in Back of Town.

Operating from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., the young organizers served 100 hot meals to active police officers from across the island. Many officers attended the event in person, while others picked up pre-prepared breakfasts to bring back to their remote posts, extending the reach of the gratitude initiative to law enforcement personnel stationed across Grand Bahama. Beyond serving officers, the group also opened the event to residents of the surrounding neighborhood, extending the day of appreciation to the wider local community.

As they served meals, the student achievers had the chance to hold casual conversations with both police officers and community members, breaking down barriers and fostering personal connections between groups that rarely get to interact in informal, positive settings. All meals for the event were prepared by the Royal Bahamas Police Force’s own in-house canteen culinary team, led by the force’s only dedicated culinary arts chef, whose behind-the-scenes work was critical to the event’s smooth running and widespread success.

To add an extra layer of support for the officers who dedicate their careers to public safety, the event also included a voluntary wellness component: qualified local nurses were on site throughout the morning to provide no-cost basic health screenings and general checkups for any attending officer, prioritizing the physical wellbeing of the people who prioritize community safety every day.

For the organizers, the breakfast initiative was far more than a one-day meal service: it was framed as a chance for emerging young leaders to tangibly express the gratitude that many community members feel for local law enforcement, while strengthening often fragile social ties between youth, police and the general public. Andreaz Burrows, president of GB Shipyard N.A.V.Y. Achievers, publicly thanked every partner and attendee that contributed to the effort, and highlighted the consistent, vital work that officers do to keep Bahamian neighborhoods safe.

“The event was a great success,” Burrows affirmed, reiterating that the initiative successfully deepened the connection between emerging young leaders, law enforcement and the broader community.

This youth-driven event is just one example of the impact Junior Achievement Bahamas has cultivated across the archipelago over four decades. As the nation’s leading youth development organization, Junior Achievement Bahamas focuses on equipping young people with critical life and career skills, including entrepreneurship, innovation, financial literacy, college preparation and workforce readiness. For 40 years, the organization has run its proven programs across multiple Bahamian islands, from Abaco and Andros to Eleuthera, the Berry Islands, Cat Island, Grand Bahama, New Providence and Mayaguana, helping generations of students understand how foundational skills like financial literacy shape the health and prosperity of every local community.

On Friday, at a public awareness exhibit hosted by the Bahamas Crisis Centre at Marathon Mall, senior officials and advocacy leaders sounded the alarm on a persisting public safety crisis in the island nation: widespread child sexual abuse and a fragmented system that continues to fail vulnerable young victims.

Centre director Sandra Dean-Patterson told attendees that in 2025 alone, more than 200 children between the ages of 3 and 17 reached out to the organization for support after surviving sexual violation, exploitation or assault. She noted that the victims included both boys and girls, and that in most cases, the abuse was perpetrated by someone the victims already knew, a common dynamic that complicates reporting and intervention.

The exhibit, focused on raising public consciousness around child sexual abuse and domestic violence, also served as a memorial to those who have lost their lives to gender-based violence. In her remarks, Dean-Patterson acknowledged one key area of progress: domestic violence-related fatalities have dropped steadily since 2000, when such violence accounted for 45 percent of all deaths in the country. Still, she emphasized that non-fatal abuse remains pervasive across the Bahamas – and, crucially, that most incidents are entirely preventable with intentional, coordinated action.

Dean-Patterson pushed back against popular, surface-level policy proposals that focus solely on harsher punishments for offenders, framing the approach as a hollow “easy fix” that avoids addressing core systemic failures. Instead, she argued, the priority must shift to improving investigations, building strong cases against perpetrators, and increasing the likelihood that offenders will be caught and held accountable. One of the most glaring gaps she highlighted is the nation’s continued lack of in-house capacity to process DNA evidence from rape kits, even as the country enters 2026. Decades of public discussion on the issue have not translated to change, she said, forcing Bahamian authorities to ship a limited number of kits to Florida for analysis – a bottleneck that derails countless investigations and lets abusers avoid justice.

Calling for broader systemic change, Dean-Patterson urged stronger public education campaigns, coordinated collective action across civil society and government, and expanded support from local media outlets to shift public norms and reduce abuse rates. She also noted that the centre invited all candidates running in the upcoming national election to attend the exhibit, saying she hopes elected leaders will prioritize this crisis after taking office and understand the long-term damage intergenerational violence inflicts on Bahamian children and communities.

Khandi Gibson, founder of the advocacy group Families of All Murder Victims, echoed Dean-Patterson’s calls for investment in education and early intervention. Gibson argued that every school-aged child in the Bahamas should receive age-appropriate education on personal boundaries, including how to distinguish safe, consensual “friendly touches” from inappropriate, harmful contact. Like Dean-Patterson, she highlighted chronic under-resourcing of victim support systems, calling for a dedicated national budget line to ensure consistent, reliable assistance for survivors of abuse and violence.

On a Thursday night, a brazen targeted attack in the crowded, tourism-focused Cable Beach area of New Providence left a high-profile alleged gang leader wanted for murder dead, sparking a massive immediate response from law enforcement. Fifty-five-year-old Mario Deveaux, also known by the alias “Mario Fox”, was discovered motionless with multiple gunshot wounds just after 10 p.m. near a Ford Taurus parked outside a gated residential property off Coral Road, a short distance from West Bay Street. First responders from Emergency Medical Services confirmed his death at the scene, with no signs of life detected.

According to initial law enforcement briefings, the entrance gate of the property was non-functional and left open at the time of the incident. Assistant Commissioner of Police Anton Rahming told reporters that Deveaux had arrived at the location, which authorities believe is his residence, alone before he was ambushed. “Once he came to that area, unknown persons exited what we believe to be an SUV vehicle and fired upon him, subsequently wounding him fatally,” Rahming stated in a press update. He added that the suspect vehicle fled the area heading east, and preliminary witness accounts place a dark-colored SUV speeding away from the crime scene moments after the gunfire stopped. Investigators suspect the people inside that vehicle are directly linked to the killing.

Law enforcement estimates three armed assailants carried out the attack, firing more than 40 rounds total. Both Deveaux’s body and his vehicle were left riddled with bullet holes, and investigators made a surprising observation at the scene: thousands of dollars in cash that Deveaux had on his person was left completely untouched, leading to early speculation that robbery was not a motive for the killing.

The shooting unfolded just steps from multiple commercial establishments along the popular Cable Beach tourist strip, including the major Sandals Royal Bahamian resort and the local favorite Curly’s Restaurant and Bar. In the wake of the attack, dozens of heavily armed police officers locked down the area, forcing temporary business closures, diverting foot and vehicle traffic, and allowing crime scene investigators to process evidence at the white residential property inside the gated community.

Deveaux was no stranger to law enforcement: he had been identified as an alleged gang leader years prior, and was named one of eight men featured on a 2017 police wanted poster for an outstanding murder charge. He was also publicly linked to the fatal shooting of another well-known alleged gang leader, Duran Neely, who went by the alias “Monster”, in August of the previous year. Investigators are currently exploring whether this killing is connected to Deveaux’s outstanding warrants or his suspected involvement in Neely’s death, though no official motive has been confirmed publicly as of the latest updates.

The killing has reignited longstanding public conversations about gang violence in the country. Years earlier, then-Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade highlighted that most recent homicides in the nation could be traced back to ongoing feuds over drug trade and personal disputes. At the time, he emphasized that “prolific serial offenders” cannot be allowed to remain “free in our communities to continue to create fear” and potentially commit more violent crimes, and called on family members, friends and associates of known repeat offenders to “turn them into police before you become targets”.

For advocacy groups that support families affected by homicide, the brazen public attack is another devastating example of the endless cycle of violence plaguing communities. Khandi Gibson, president of Families of All Murder Victims (FOAM), expressed renewed concern over the killing, warning of the unbroken cycle of retaliatory violence and its lasting harm on innocent family members. “I’ve been doing FOAM for many years, and I’ve seen the hunter become the hunted,” Gibson noted. She added that while violence often cycles between perpetrators and victims, the deepest, longest-lasting damage is inflicted on the loved ones left behind, particularly children and extended relatives who struggle with unresolved grief for years after funerals end.

Gibson also issued a call for careful handling of information during the active investigation, warning that premature release of suspect details can spark additional retaliatory attacks and put innocent bystanders at unnecessary risk.