RENOWNED singer-actor and seasoned civil rights activist Harry Belafonte says civil society needs to get more involved in the policy-making process and lessen the influence of private sector lobbyists for the benefit of the young.

Belafonte, who is of Jamaican descent and who has been a vocal critic of the George W Bush Republican administration, said that this greater civic involvement should include lobbying Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for the United States presidency.

Belafonte was addressing guests at a ball Tuesday night at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel to mark the close of the biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference.

The 81-year-old Belafonte directed many of his remarks towards the US, but warned that a lack of civic responsibility was damaging the future of young people the world over.

"No matter where you go in the world we are living in deeply troubled times but parallel to that fact we are also seeing remarkable opportunities. For me the important part of participating in this Diaspora conference is to seize the opportunity of what I think is the most critical concern, everything that we do from this moment on and into the immediate future and that is the focus on what is happening to the children of our planet," said Belafonte amid applause from an audience that not only consisted of Jamaicans from Canada, United States and the United Kingdom but also as far afield as Asia and South Africa.

Belafonte also criticised adults for blaming youths for their behaviour while not doing enough to guide them.

"When our children walk out and do the things they do, we all adults, turn into some kind of selfish hierarchical disgust at what those young people are doing, laying no claim to any responsibility for what we forced them to do and for what we permitted them to do," he said.

Turning to Obama - whose mention elicited loud applause - Belafonte urged his audience to engage the man who could become America's first black president on Election Day in November.

"It is interesting to me, not only intellectually but politically, that that idea of change remains very much abstract. He has said much and will continue to say much that is required, but nobody still has a handle on what does he mean by change. if each and everyone of you have a sense of the need for change and see in him the instrument of change you bring your concept to him of what you think that change should be," he said, adding that it was pointless just to expect Obama to bring change without any civic assistance.

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