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Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Making MC Kai Lands Proud

by

20160605

The roads in up­per Mc Kai Lands, Bel­mont, are nar­row, and the prospects for many of the com­mu­ni­ty's youths ap­pear to be even nar­row­er.The young peo­ple face many so­cial is­sues grow­ing up in a com­mu­ni­ty which many would de­scribe as a de­pressed area, and many of them come from back­grounds of dis­ad­van­tage and abuse.

But at least sev­en of them are hop­ing to turn their lives around by tak­ing up the chal­lenge and schol­ar­ships of­fered by the MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West Stu­art Young to par­tic­i­pate in Ser­vol's (Ser­vice Vol­un­teered for All) Ado­les­cent De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme. Fund­ing for the schol­ar­ships came from pri­vate spon­sors. All they want­ed was a chance to prove them­selves, im­prove their lot in life and give back to their com­mu­ni­ty with the skills they are learn­ing at Ser­vol.

Young, min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, be­lieves the youths of Mc Kai Lands can be bea­cons of hope for their com­mu­ni­ty.

Young said: "When I first en­tered the con­stituen­cy of Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West, there were a lot of warn­ings and some­what neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions about an area called Mc Kai Lands.

"I made con­tact with per­sons who in­ter­act­ed with the youths and ven­tured in­to Mc Kai Lands to see what the com­mu­ni­ty was about. Over time, I built a re­la­tion­ship with in­di­vid­u­als from the area in­clud­ing Carl Clarke, who works with the youths.

"It has been a very re­ward­ing re­la­tion­ship to see a com­mu­ni­ty bond to­geth­er and look af­ter its youths in the way that they have."He said he was hap­py to see the young peo­ple pro­gress­ing through Ser­vol's pro­gramme and chal­lenged them in turn to be lead­ers of their com­mu­ni­ty and pos­i­tive bea­cons of hope for the oth­ers to fol­low.

Young said Mc Kai Lands had proven to be an ex­em­plary com­mu­ni­ty and he wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with any oth­er com­mu­ni­ty in the con­stituen­cy that was will­ing to help it­self the way Mc Kai Lands had.He said he was al­so work­ing with res­i­dents to pro­vide run­ning wa­ter in the com­mu­ni­ty for the first time. Dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign in 2015 he pro­vid­ed a num­ber of wa­ter tanks for the com­mu­ni­ty.

Clarke: Youths in Mc Kai Lands come from bro­ken homes

Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Carl Clarke, 40, who is like a big broth­er or fa­ther fig­ure to the youths in up­per Mc Kai Lands, said he want­ed to thank Min­is­ter Young for his ini­tia­tive to give the youths the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn a trade through Ser­vol, a stipend of $50 a day, coun­selling and men­tor­ing.

He said he hoped that oth­er min­is­ters and cit­i­zens of T&T fol­lowed Young's ex­am­ple and help par­ents with jobs as well. Mc Kai Lands need­ed a Cepep (Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme) gang, a con­struc­tion crew, among oth­er things for the area.

Clarke, a bar­ber by trade, said he had been do­ing com­mu­ni­ty work for ten years, but for four years he had be­come dis­il­lu­sioned with politi­cians and busi­ness­men's bro­ken promis­es to as­sist the com­mu­ni­ty.

He said Young was dif­fer­ent how­ev­er; when he talked to the MP he sound­ed very pos­i­tive to­wards the youths and help­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. Clarke said even be­fore the elec­tion cam­paign start­ed Young asked him if he could get four youths to en­rol in Ser­vol.

But it was a chal­leng­ing task to get the youths in­volved. At first the youths didn't re­al­ly grav­i­tate to the idea, Clarke said. But re­tired Sco­tia­bank man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Richard Young, the min­is­ter's fa­ther, urged him to get them in­volved–it start­ed with one youth, Roy Bobb, who said he want­ed to give it a try, then six oth­er youths came on­board.

The el­der Young, he said, helped source sev­er­al spon­sors and do­na­tions, books and equip­ment for the youths to go to school, and Fran­cis Fash­ions do­nat­ed shirts, pants and shoes for them to at­tend church.He said while in­tro­duc­ing them­to the pro­gramme and car­ry­ing them to Ser­vol, he re­alised that some of the youths were cry­ing out for help, the re­la­tion­ship with their fa­thers was dis­tant, some fa­thers weren't even work­ing while oth­ers were just hus­tling.

Clarke said some of the youths' moth­ers made many mis­takes in life–and bur­dened with their own prob­lems–they didn't know how to con­nect or re­late to their own chil­dren.He said some of the youths didn't even have a moth­er or fa­ther, and the fam­i­ly mem­bers they stayed with treat­ed them bad­ly.

Watch­ing them grow up, he un­der­stood that chil­dren were not the prob­lem, it was their par­ents as they came from bro­ken homes which in­flu­enced their be­hav­iour and the ap­a­thy they en­coun­tered.

As the youths faced myr­i­ad so­cial ills in the com­mu­ni­ty, Clarke said he de­cid­ed to stick around and be a big broth­er or fa­ther to them, some­one who cared about their wel­fare and en­sured that they stayed in the pro­gramme.He said he took up the man­tle the way he was brought up by the el­ders in the com­mu­ni­ty and ap­plied their teach­ings to guide to­day's youths, and now the com­mu­ni­ty is be­gin­ning to see sub­tle changes.

Clarke said the youths are now un­der­stand­ing what life is all about, when they wake up in the morn­ing they now want to earn a liv­ing, they're talk­ing about work­ing, mar­riage, at­tend­ing church, and get­ting their own house.He said there were many youths in ghet­tos all over T&T who were look­ing to make that step but peo­ple weren't giv­ing them that chance.

With no en­cour­age­ment from their par­ents, he said they need­ed the sup­port from the busi­ness sec­tor and politi­cians.He said God made the strong to help the weak, a re­ces­sion might be chal­leng­ing for big things, but if at­ten­tion wasn't paid to the small things, the com­mu­ni­ty may lose an en­tire gen­er­a­tion and the sit­u­a­tion could get worse.

The Sun­day Guardian spoke to five of the youths who have been in the pro­gramme for four months now.

Abi­gail Stone, 15, the on­ly girl from the area in Ser­vol's Ju­nior Life Cen­tre pro­gramme said she liked how the school took the time to teach and in­still dis­ci­pline in stu­dents.She said she en­joyed class­es and ac­tiv­i­ties such as dra­ma, march­ing, cook­ing, math­e­mat­ics, com­put­ers, arts, Eng­lish and life skills.Stone said she was one of the well-be­haved stu­dents in Ser­vol, didn't give trou­ble and lis­tened to her teach­ers in one of the high­est per­form­ing class­es.She said she re­ceived good grades and the teach­ers liked her be­cause she was at­ten­tive.She said she will con­tin­ue work­ing hard at school, make Young proud and not dis­ap­point him.

Roy Bobb, 18, is study­ing air con­di­tion­ing. He said Young en­cour­aged them to do good and stay in school.Bobb said he want­ed to let oth­er youths know that it wasn't a bed of ros­es out there in the world.He said lim­ing on the block made no sense, the best thing youths can do was to change their life and make the best of the op­por­tu­ni­ties such as the Ser­vol schol­ar­ships that they re­ceived.

Joshua Sama­roo, 18, is study­ing air con­di­tion­ing. He said he want­ed to thank Young for his ini­tia­tive, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to give the youths a chance and put them through Ser­vol.He said the life skills that they were learn­ing will play an im­por­tant part in their lives and he hoped that oth­er youths through­out the coun­try were giv­en the same op­por­tu­ni­ty, and to help them stay out of trou­ble.

Nathaniel Mitchell, 17, who is study­ing au­to me­chan­ics, said it was a lot of work but re­ward­ing.He said he would like to ap­ply what he is learn­ing as the area need­ed me­chan­ics.Mitchell said he met Young through Clarke. He said Ser­vol's ado­les­cent de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme was very good, that the school should keep up the good work and see if it can get more youths in­volved.

Em­manuel Mitchell, 19, is study­ing food nu­tri­tion and wants to be a chef. He said the pro­gramme was ben­e­fi­cial to the youths in Mc Kai Lands and helps him stay off the streets.Mitchell said it made no sense lim­ing on the block where some­one could lose their life.He said Ser­vol's pro­gramme of­fered them a chance to change their lives, to look for a bet­ter way out of the ghet­to and be­come a bet­ter per­son. He said they were not go­ing to let Young down.

More in­fo

For more in­for­ma­tion on how to help or do­nate to the youths from Mc Kai Lands call the MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West Stu­art Young's con­stituen­cy of­fice on Ob­ser­va­to­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, tele­phone 624-6855.


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