Salvation Army volunteer, honours student and Carifta Games hopeful, CedarBridge Academy student Akeila Richardson is clearly an outstanding young lady and wholly deserving of the Outstanding Teen Award.

Other young people also won awards for sports, arts and academic achievements, at the ceremony organised by Teen Services and they will feature in articles in

The Royal Gazette later.

It is so pleasing to be able to highlight such ‘positivity’ in the paper, and goes to show that amid all the bad news, all the doom and gloom, there is an awful lot that goes on in the community that is good. It is a fair bet that for every one story we feature there are another three or four similar stories that go unreported.

We need to salute our young people and do everything possible to help, because our future is in their hands ... they need and deserve to be nurtured and it is up to the community to do so. We all know the saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.

Bermuda could and should be that village and the community must unite to safeguard the future of our young people, to safeguard the future of the Island.

* If you know a young person who you think merits being featured as one of our weekly Young Achievers, please e-mail Jonathan Bell, jbell[AT]royalgazette.bm.