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The Barbados 4-H Foundation has thrown out a public call for technically skilled volunteers to help expand its youth-focused development programs beyond their historical roots in agricultural training, according to Vice Chairman Osmond Harewood. The appeal was formally launched this Tuesday at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Animal Nutrition Unit located in The Pine, kicking off the organization’s new “Call to Volunteer” initiative.

Speaking to reporters on site, Harewood framed the effort as a straightforward but critical ask for community engagement. “Today we are making a simple yet important call. Give your time, share your talent, and help shape the future of all young people of our country,” he stated. Unlike common perceptions of volunteerism as just a donation of free time, Harewood emphasized that participating is fundamentally an investment in the nation’s next generation. “Volunteers bring knowledge, experience, creativity, and practical skills that can make a meaningful difference in the lives of our young people,” he added.

The core goal of the new recruitment drive is to strengthen the network of local 4-H clubs by growing the pool of available mentors, program leaders and skilled volunteers who can support the organization’s innovative 4-H Forward curriculum. This expanded curriculum covers a far broader range of topics than the foundation’s historic agricultural training, including natural resource management, healthy lifestyle education, leadership development, civic engagement, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) training, and youth entrepreneurship.

Harewood noted that a common public misconception frames 4-H as an agriculture-only organization, and this program expansion is designed to correct that outdated view. “Sometimes people tend to think that 4-H is just agriculture, and I think we want to show this is more than agriculture,” he said. The foundation is specifically targeting candidates with expertise in high-demand areas including public speaking, organizational leadership, civic education, club operations and financial management, as it seeks to deepen the technical skill sets available to program participants. “What we are calling for is more technical skills within the clubs. All those basic areas are part and parcel of what we are looking for [in] persons to come and give the technical skills to those young persons,” Harewood explained.

Importantly, the vice chairman stressed that the foundation has not had to suspend any existing programming due to current volunteer shortages. Instead, the recruitment drive is focused on adding deeper, cross-disciplinary technical expertise to lighten the load for the foundation’s small full-time staff and open up new opportunities for youth. “There’s nothing we have put a pause on. What we are saying is that many hands make light work, and right now the work on the few staff that we have is pretty heavy,” he said. “We have skilled and talented persons in my business that could offer their services, but sometimes they’re waiting for somebody to call them. So we are saying yes, we need your skills.”

National Programme Coordinator Theodore Fraser echoed Harewood’s comments, highlighting youth entrepreneurship as a particularly high-priority area where additional volunteer support is urgently needed. “Definitely one of the areas is the whole emphasis on entrepreneurship,” Fraser said. He explained that while young participants already gain valuable hands-on skills through existing 4-H programs, the organization wants to help them turn those competencies into long-term, sustainable income and career opportunities. “How do we transfer this into something that they can build a career from or earn from as well?” Fraser asked, noting that the ultimate goal is to ensure young people can leverage their 4-H experience in meaningful, economically sustainable activities long after they graduate from secondary school.

A landmark two-day training workshop focused on elevating communication strategies and service standards for senior officers of The Barbados Police Service kicked off on Tuesday at the District ‘A’ Complex in Station Hill, St Michael. This initiative marks the first collaborative effort between the Regional Police Training Centre and the National Transformation Initiative (NTI), a government agency established in 2020 to upskill Barbados’ workforce as part of the national Economic Recovery and Transformation Programme.

Speaking at the opening of the workshop, Police Commissioner Sonia Boyce emphasized that transparent, timely communication with the public is no longer a peripheral add-on to policing—it is a fundamental pillar of modern leadership and effective law enforcement. “In modern policing, communication is not an optional extra; it is a core part of leadership,” Boyce told attendees. She explained that every public interaction, whether through an official press briefing, a social media post, or a face-to-face conversation at an incident scene, directly shapes public trust in the police service. A single misstep or poorly timed statement can erode public confidence, while clear, compassionate communication can reinforce the service’s credibility.

Boyce highlighted the unique challenges of policing in the digital age, where smartphone footage and unconfirmed reports spread across social media within minutes of an incident unfolding. “If we do not tell our story clearly and responsibly, someone else will tell it for us, and often not correctly,” she noted. Beyond external communication, the commissioner stressed that strong internal communication is equally critical, directly impacting officer morale, operational performance, and cross-team trust. “Good leaders do not just issue instructions; they explain the purpose, they listen to concerns, and they make sure the message is understood,” she said. Encouraging participants to engage fully with the workshop’s activities, Boyce added that meaningful professional growth often occurs when individuals step outside their familiar comfort zones.

NTI Director Dr Allyson Leacock outlined the framework of her agency’s contribution to the training, dubbed the *Art and Heart of Service* programme. Leacock explained that the programme’s name stems from the core belief that truly exceptional public service goes beyond routine, transactional interactions—it must be rooted in empathy and intention. “Our programme is called the Art and Heart of Service because we believe that customer service can be transactional, but really great service, which we have all experienced at some point, is usually from the heart,” she said.

Given the Barbados Police Service’s role as a public-facing institution that reflects the country’s full demographic diversity, Leacock noted that upskilling the force is a central priority for NTI’s workforce development mandate. The training is structured around four interactive modules: culture and organizational transformation, disability etiquette, professional deportment and personal branding, communication skills, and ethics and integrity. Describing ethics and integrity as the unseen foundation of public service, Leacock said the module focuses on “the anchor that predicts how each of us behaves every single day when nobody is looking.” The programme prioritizes mindset shifts before technical skill-building, she explained, noting that real-world performance under pressure depends far more on core values than classroom knowledge alone.

Leacock also used the occasion to push for greater adoption of digital tools within the police service, urging leadership to prioritize digital literacy and eventually full digital fluency across the constabulary. “I know we are all very wedded to hard black and blue books in the public service. I know that we love our paper, but the world is going digital, and we cannot be left behind,” she said.

Regional Police Training Centre Commandant Roderic Walcott added that the workshop was developed specifically to meet rising public expectations for transparent, accessible policing. “We are all part of the transformational policing approach, which is more practicable and suitable for today’s society,” Walcott said. “We are now policing a public who expect more interaction and communication from us.” Whether updating the public on an active crime scene, sharing information about a traffic collision, or addressing broader community security concerns, the ability to communicate clearly has become a non-negotiable skill for modern officers, he added.

The workshop is tailored for senior command team members, lead investigating officers, and selected inspectors and station sergeants, bringing together senior leaders from across the force to align on new communication and service standards. Per the planned schedule, NTI will lead the Art of Service module first, after which communication experts will facilitate joint hands-on training sessions focused on practical application.