What Turks and Caicos Taught Me About Belonging and Becoming

Spending time with some of the brightest youth at the Edward C. Gartland Youth Centre during Camp Elevate.

Turks and Caicos reminded me that community is not something you visit. It is something you are invited into.

There is a softness to the islands that invites you to exhale, but beneath that gentleness is something steady and strong. A deep sense of identity. A knowing of who the community is and who it is becoming. You feel it in the way people greet one another, in the way elders speak about the past, and in the way young people talk about what they hope to build.

At the Edward C. Gartland Youth Centre, especially through Camp Elevate, I saw what it looks like when young people are not rushed to perform but are given room to become. Creative spaces filled with music, sewing, writing, and imagination. Adults who did not hover over potential, but held it with care. An environment that quietly said, you are safe to explore who you are here, and you are trusted in the process.

One young person told me they were still figuring themselves out. Not with doubt, but with confidence. With the freedom to be in process. That stayed with me, because so many systems demand answers before they offer belonging. So many places ask young people to prove their worth before they are trusted with space.

My time with Antwon HF. Walkin, AIAS, president of the Turks & Caicos Islands Society of Young Leaders (TCISYL).

Listening to leaders from the Turks and Caicos Islands Society of Young Leaders, I was reminded that youth are not waiting for the future. They are shaping it. Thoughtful. Grounded. Carrying vision and responsibility for their communities with clarity and care. What I witnessed was not just potential. It was authorship.

This is narrative equity in practice. Young people speaking for themselves. Naming their own stories. Being trusted as present-tense leaders, not future ones. Being centered, not managed. Heard, not translated.

Belonging, I learned there, is not a feeling. It is a foundation. It is the soil that allows voice, leadership, and possibility to grow.