Worshipful Master, Grand Master, officers, brethren, ladies and gentlemen, good evening.
Thank you for welcoming me here tonight. I feel a real sense of kinship in this room, because I am among men who understand duty, discipline and service. In a lodge, a man is measured by his character, his honesty and his willingness to serve. Those are the same measures I try to apply in my own life.
I came tonight prepared to join you in celebration, and I do. But I also came with something heavy on my heart. I did not want to let this moment pass without speaking plainly to you, as a fellow Bahamian man, as a father and grandfather, and as someone who has seen what is happening to our boys and young men up close.
There is a crisis among males in this country. I feel it in my spirit long before I read it in any report.
I see it in the funerals I attend, where the casket is small, and the tears are loud, and a mother keeps saying, “He was just starting to change, Prime Minister. He was just starting to turn his life around.”
I see it when I visit the prison, and a young man, barely in his twenties, says to me, “Mr Davis, I never thought my life would come to this.” And when I look at him, I do not see a stranger. I see a boy who was once in a school uniform, who once had a laugh, who once had dreams.
I see it when grandmothers hold my hand and whisper, “Pray for my grandson, please. I am afraid for him.”
Then, after the funerals, after the visits, after the private conversations, I sit with the statistics, and they confirm what I already know in my heart.
Fewer than half of our high school students leave school with a diploma. Only about 46 percent meet the minimum requirements. The rest leave school without the qualifications that open doors. Our boys are heavily represented in that half that slips away.
Girls are racing ahead in the classroom. They receive most of the top grades in the BGCSEs. At the University of The Bahamas, women fill about three quarters of the seats. Our daughters are showing tremendous drive and discipline, and I am proud of them. At the same time, I cannot ignore what this means for our sons, who are drifting away from the very institutions that should be preparing them for adulthood.
Then we look at violence. In recent years, almost every name on the murder list has belonged to a man, most of them between 18 and 35. It is as if we have a silent war taking place against our young men, and many of them are both the victims and the perpetrators.
Behind prison walls, the picture is the same. Over 90 percent of the inmates are male. Many are still in their youth. Many have not yet been convicted, but they are already cut off from family, from opportunity, from the ordinary rhythm of life.
In the labour force, men struggle more to find steady work. Among young males, close to one in five is unemployed. That is a large number of young men waking up with no job to go to, no pay cheque coming, no clear path ahead.
The health figures speak quietly but powerfully. A baby boy born in The Bahamas today can expect to live several years less than a baby girl. A young Bahamian man is far more likely to die before he reaches sixty than a young Bahamian woman.
And then there is the area that is often whispered about, but seldom addressed head on. Suicide. Most of those deaths are males. Our men are leaving this world by their own hand far more often than our women. That tells me that many men are carrying pain, shame and confusion in silence.
This is what I mean when I speak of a male crisis.
These are our sons, our grandsons, our nephews, our godsons. These are the boys who once ran up and down in the yard, who once fell asleep on someone’s shoulder after a long day at school or church. Somewhere along the way, they lost their footing, and too often, we were not there to catch them.
I grew up in Cat Island. I grew up in a country that did not offer me much in material terms. But I had something that made a difference. I had men who believed in me, corrected me, and expected me to carry myself with respect. They did not always use fine words. Sometimes it was a look, sometimes it was a firm voice, sometimes it was a simple, “Boy, you can do better than this.”
Those men gave me something that I still carry. They convinced me that my life had value, that my mind could be stretched, that my future could be different from my present.
I sometimes ask myself, late at night, how many boys in Nassau, in Grand Bahama, in our Family Islands, still have that circle of men around them. How many have a father present, or an uncle, or a coach, or a neighbour, who takes the time to guide them.
We have to be honest. Our homes have changed. Our communities have changed. Violence and drugs have filled spaces where mothers, fathers and elders used to stand. Social media tells our boys to chase quick money and short-term recognition, instead of steady work and a good name. They are told that to be a man is to never show fear, never show sadness, never ask for help. Then we act surprised when they explode in anger, or collapse in silence.
I do not stand in judgment over them. I stand in responsibility with them.
I am their Prime Minister, yes. I am also a man who knows what it is to face hardship, to feel overlooked, to have to fight for every inch of progress. I look at these young men, and I see pieces of my own story, twisted by different times and harsher pressures.
So when I speak about this issue, I am not speaking as a distant official reading out a list of figures. I am speaking as someone who has sat with the grieving, walked through the prison gates, and listened to the stories that never make the headlines.
As a government, we are trying to change the conditions that keep producing this crisis.
We are making sure children have a proper breakfast in school, because no child can learn on an empty stomach. We are expanding technical and vocational paths, so that boys whose gifts are practical and creative can find their way into trades and professions with dignity. We are investing in youth programmes that offer discipline, skills and national service. We are working to improve mental health support, so that people have somewhere to turn before they reach breaking point.
These steps matter. They help. But they are not enough on their own.
The truth is this. No policy paper can love a boy. No budget line item can sit with a young man who is about to make the wrong choice and talk him out of it. That is the work of people, of families, of communities, of men who care.
That is where you come in.
You are the Pride of Grand Bahama Lodge. You already understand brotherhood, accountability and service. You understand what it means to take a young man into your circle and help him grow.
I want to ask you, from my heart, to look beyond these walls tonight and see the faces of the boys who need you.
See the boy who is hanging around the corner every evening, because he does not want to go home to a house full of shouting.
See the boy who has stopped coming to school regularly, because he has already decided that he is “a failure”, and no one has told him otherwise.
See the boy who seems angry all the time, because anger is the only emotion he has ever been allowed to show.
See the boy who is quiet and withdrawn, because he has already started to give up on himself.
Then ask yourselves, as a lodge, what you can do together, in partnership with us in government, to reach them before the streets do, before the gangs do, before the prison does, before the grave does.
What would it look like if this lodge adopted a school, not for a ceremony, but for a relationship. Men in the classrooms, men in the assemblies, men sitting under a tree talking to boys about work, respect, love, responsibility.
What would it look like if each brother here chose one boy or young man to mentor with intention. A phone call every week. A visit to a ball game. Help with homework. Advice about work. A quiet word when you see danger signs
Some of you are employers. You can create internships and apprenticeships. Some of you are skilled craftsmen. You can teach boys how to wire a house, fix an engine, repair a roof. Some of you have walked very close to the edge in your own younger days, and you know exactly what it feels like to be tempted by quick money and fast life. Your story, told honestly, can save another life.
And there is another side to this.
Some of the men in this room are carrying their own scars. You might be successful, respected, well dressed, but still wounded from your own childhood, still wrestling with memories you push down, still fighting private battles with stress, or anger, or loneliness.
I want to say to you, as your Prime Minister and as your brother, there is no weakness in admitting that you need help. There is courage in saying to another man, “I am struggling.” The more we make it acceptable for men to speak openly about what they are going through, the safer this country will become for our boys.
Let this lodge be a place where men can be strong and tender at the same time. A place where you pray for each other and also ask the hard questions. A place where success is measured not only by how high one man rises, but by how many he pulls up with him
If we treat this male crisis as a passing concern, it will continue to devour our sons. If we treat it as a shared moral responsibility, we can begin to turn the tide.
I want a Bahamas where our sons walk beside our daughters as equals in education, in work and in leadership. A Bahamas where fewer mothers sit on the front row of funerals. A Bahamas where the prison population shrinks, and the number of young men graduating, starting families, opening businesses and serving their communities grows.
That future is still possible. It will not arrive by accident. It will come when men like you decide that the fate of the next generation of boys is part of your duty as masons, as citizens and as Bahamians
Tonight, as you install your officers and renew your bonds of brotherhood, I ask you to make a quiet promise in your heart. Promise that you will not walk past a boy in trouble and call it “someone else’s child”. Promise that you will give your time, your skill, your patience, your example.
If we do this together, lodge by lodge, church by church, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, we can write a different story for our boys and young men.
May God bless this lodge and those who lead it. May He comfort the families who have lost sons, and may He give us the wisdom and courage to protect the next generation of Bahamian men. May God bless you all, and may God bless the Commonwealth of The Bahamas.