The organiser of an initiative aimed at helping at-risk young people in Bermuda yesterday appealed for help to ensure the scheme is a success.

Marc Bean was speaking to the Hamilton Rotary Club where he explained the concept behind the Mirrors initiative.

He said it is an intensive intervention programme for teens between the ages of 15 to 18 who are at-risk or on the verge of falling through the cracks.

Mr. Bean, the programme’s recruitment and enrolment manager, told the Rotary meeting: “These youths are generally already known to the helping professionals, employment services, education system or the criminal justice system.”

According to Mr. Bean, 33, there are around 500 or 600 young people on the Island that could be classified as “at-risk”, and this programme will begin by helping 35 of those individuals to “help themselves”.

The programme is the first of its kind on a national level, though there are people and institutions on the Island that work on similar principles, he explained.

He said: “The goal of Mirrors is to develop human potential by assisting participants to better understand themselves. The programme will give participants a new context in which to mould their lives. With this new context, these youth will have new choices for their future and continued development.”

As the recruitment manager, Mr. Bean explained that the programme is suited for teens who are violent, pregnant or involved with drug or criminal activity — basically any behaviour that puts an individual at risk to harm themselves or others.

Youth must be referred and enrolled into the programme by a youth professional — Mirrors has 108 trained volunteers — and can leave the programme at any time, they are not forced into it.

Participating youth will go on to complete a six-day residential-intervention programme, where they will thoroughly examine themselves, find out ‘who they are’, ‘how they got where they are’, ‘what they want to get out of life’ and ‘how to get there’.

Youth will also try and get rid of “psychological garbage” affecting their lives, Mr. Bean said: “The blessing to be received is to identify the same experience when it comes again in life and chose not to go along that path — get people to start thinking right.”

During the six-day residential programme, youths will be involved in group discussions, a series of challenging outdoor exercises designed to create team building and a sense of achievement and are prepared to re-enter their communities.

“This phase of the programme involves the provision of services necessary to assist the youth participants in reaching their goals and successfully re-engaging with the community,” Mr. Bean explained.

After this, is the follow-up at which point the trained volunteers will spend a year coaching each youth on a one-on-one basis to ensure they are implementing positive changes in their lives. Mr. Bean said: “Mirrors is consistent with the goal of the Bermuda Government to make Bermuda work for all of her people. The programme will provide several benefits to the participants and to the community as a whole.”

He added that Mirrors has the potential to decrease anti-social behaviour, raise self-confidence and self-worth and will develop new employment potential.

He appealed for Rotarians to help with donations for food for the residential programme as well as space facilities that Mirrors could use to conduct orientations and training.

He said: “The Mirrors programme is another opportunity for service-minded persons like you, to put into practice the Golden Rule — that is to love thy neighbour as thyself.”

He continued: “It is to ensure that the Bermuda of tomorrow will be one based on prosperity and progress, so that our Island’s stability will be one based on goodwill and peace.”