On Jan­u­ary 17, a qui­et bat­tle took place among the mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force, as sol­diers, coast guard and air guard of­fi­cers pit­ted against each oth­er to try to im­press a 10-year-old boy.The boy, Kam­ron Hinds, a San­gre Grande res­i­dent, is a pa­tient at the Wendy Fitzwilliam pae­di­atric hos­pi­tal in Mt Hope and is fight­ing his own bat­tle with acute lym­phoblas­tic leukemia, a form of can­cer.

Kam­ron, who is one of over 50 chil­dren be­ing sup­port­ed in the Just Be­cause Foun­da­tion's "Coura­geous Kids" pro­gramme was di­ag­nosed with the can­cer last year.He has ex­pe­ri­enced in­ter­mit­tent hos­pi­tal stays, and will most like­ly miss school un­til the new term in Sep­tem­ber as he is treat­ed for his ill­ness.In an in­ter­view last week, Kam­ron's moth­er Michelle de­scribed her son as a dri­ven young man, who has want­ed to be a sol­dier for as far as she can re­mem­ber.

Asked why he want­ed to be a sol­dier, she said it was very like­ly be­cause of the video game Call of Du­ty.

Re­al­is­ing dreams

The Just Be­cause Foun­da­tion, head­ed by Chevaughn and Noel Joseph, be­gan a "Wish­ing Well" ini­tia­tive last year.In an in­ter­view at her home in Diego Mar­tin, Chevaughn said the wish­ing well ini­tia­tive was about mak­ing sure the chil­dren had pos­i­tive thoughts which would con­tribute to their well­ness."We in­ter­viewed the kids last year and one of the ques­tions was if you had one wish, what would it be," Chevaughn said.

"We re­alised that a lot of the things the chil­dren wished for, was sim­ple things that we could do."All the kids have a dif­fer­ent dream, a dif­fer­ent wish and we will do things one step at a time to make sure we can make their wish­es come true."The pro­gramme, which at­tempts to grant wish­es in sup­port of well­ness, is a process where chil­dren are in­ter­viewed and the foun­da­tion, through the sup­port of cit­i­zens, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers and spon­sors, con­tribute to make a child's wish come true.

Kam­ron, isn't the first child to re­ceive a wish in the pro­gramme.Last year, three-year-old Kaelon said all he want­ed to do when he grew up was "eat cake."This wish was grant­ed in the form of a huge birth­day cake spon­sored by an em­ploy­ee of the Kiss bak­ing com­pa­ny, while 17-year-old Stephon, who al­ways dreamed of trav­el­ling to an­oth­er coun­try, was gift­ed with a trip to Bar­ba­dos with his moth­er. The tick­ets were do­nat­ed by Caribbean air­lines.

Kam­ron's day wish was slight­ly dif­fer­ent to ac­com­plish, but turned in­to a strate­gi­cal­ly fun day which he and his broth­er Keagon still de­scribe as the "best day ever."

Sol­dier at heart

Civ­il Mil­i­tary Af­fairs Of­fi­cer of the T&T De­fence Force, Ma­jor Al Alexan­der, said the en­tire De­fence Force was more than hap­py to get in­volved to grant Kam­ron's wish.He said when cor­re­spon­dence was passed on to Chief of De­fence Staff Brig Gen Ken­rick Ma­haraj, his on­ly in­struc­tion was to go all out to en­sure Kam­ron had a mem­o­rable and en­joy­able day."Al­though we were told Kam­ron in­tend­ed to be­come a sol­dier, we took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show him the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty," Alexan­der said.

"The dif­fer­ent arms of the De­fence Force got in­volved, and there was a bit of com­pe­ti­tion to see who could im­press him the most."Kam­ron's day, which he shared with his broth­er and par­ents, be­gan with a sur­prise vis­it at the hos­pi­tal, from where he was giv­en a mil­i­tary es­cort to the West­ern penin­su­la to vis­it the Coast Guard base, at Staubles Bay, Ch­aguara­mas.

He was al­lowed on to two ves­sels and wit­nessed the tail end of an op­er­a­tion. Kam­ron was then tak­en to the reg­i­ment base at Teteron, Ch­aguara­mas where he had tar­get prac­tice, shoot­ing blanks, be­fore go­ing on a he­li­copter ride to Pi­ar­co to meet the Air Guard."We are look­ing at dif­fer­ent ways to con­tin­ue our re­la­tion­ship with Kam­ron. He is re­al­ly a sol­dier to his heart."

He said the mil­i­tary's ex­pe­ri­ence with Kam­ron was a "re­al feel good mo­ment" for the or­gan­i­sa­tion and was an ex­am­ple of the dif­fer­ent ways the or­gan­i­sa­tion could serve the pub­lic.