Malis­sa Lara

It's here! All your hopes, dreams and goals have ar­rived in a sealed en­ve­lope to get you back on track, just in case you lost your way. It may seem like an un­usu­al idea but chil­dren who are part of the Grow­ing Lead­ers or­gan­i­sa­tion can ex­pect to re­ceive in­di­vid­ual en­velopes at age 18. Found­ed by Sallyann Del­la Casa, the Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tion has been reach­ing out to schools through­out the coun­try, fo­cussing on chil­dren eight to 12 years. Two of the schools they have vis­it­ed are the Curepe Pres­by­ter­ian and the Maple Leaf In­ter­na­tion­al. Grow­ing Lead­ers has as its sup­port, glob­al am­bas­sadors, who though Tri­ni-born no longer live in T&T. The pro­grammes that Grow­ing Lead­ers share have been in ex­is­tence for many years but this is the first time they've been brought to T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to Del­la Casa, the goal is to get chil­dren to re­alise their tal­ents and en­sure they know they can all be lead­ers. "It's about get­ting them in tune with the think­ing that I al­ready have a gift, I al­ready have a tal­ent," she said last Tues­day. Thus far the or­gan­i­sa­tion has the sup­port of pri­vate and Pres­by­ter­ian schools that are will­ing to be­gin the train­ing when school re-opens in Sep­tem­ber. They would like to get Grow­ing Lead­ers in­to the gov­ern­ment school sys­tem. "The pro­gramme is free to the Gov­ern­ment and we need their sup­port. Pub­lic schools that have the most need should ben­e­fit and not on­ly the pri­vate and Gov­ern­ment af­fil­i­at­ed schools," Del­la Casa said.

Learn­ing life lessons

Tak­ing place with­in ap­point­ed school days, the eight to 12 lessons will in­cor­po­rate life lessons such as deal­ing with fail­ure and dis­cussing how it can be used as an op­por­tu­ni­ty. "Fail­ing at an age of 11 or 12 can be the worst thing for some of them," she said. They al­so will deal with com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, bul­ly­ing and dis­crim­i­na­tion. "Each les­son can be cor­re­lat­ed with what they are re­quired to teach on the syl­labus," Del­la Casa said. The chil­dren al­so get a taste of the world of work to­ward the end of the course with a two-hour field trip to a busi­ness place. "It's im­por­tant that what they are taught in class they can con­nect the dots with it in re­al life," she said. Busi­ness vol­un­teers will be tak­ing the time to speak with the chil­dren and teach­ers will be trained. Del­la Casa said the or­gan­i­sa­tion has act­ed as a mag­net to bring Gen­er­a­tion X glob­al am­bas­sadors to­geth­er. They would like to im­part some of the mind­sets that they grew up with. "Cer­tain­ly our gen­er­a­tion grew up with a strong sense of any­thing is pos­si­ble. We thought we could con­quer the world," she said. Men­tor­ing is al­so not new to most of them. "Most of us have al­ways been in­volved in men­tor­ing kids," she said.

Grow­ing Leader Founder Sallyann Del­la Casa, left, has a work ses­sion with Michelle Ram­jat­tan and Yosha­belle Em­manuel both of whom are in­volved in the Foun­da­tion as Busi­ness Fa­cil­i­ta­tor and Ad­vi­so­ry Board Team mem­bers.

Fund­ed by the am­bas­sadors

The pro­gramme is fund­ed by the glob­al am­bas­sadors. That's the great thing about this pro­gramme. We're not ask­ing any­one for any­thing. "We are com­ing and say­ing, we're go­ing to make a dif­fer­ence...Give us ac­cess," Del­la Casa said. The or­gan­i­sa­tion plans to ap­proach the Gov­ern­ment in the fu­ture about tax cred­its and new leg­is­la­tion for com­pa­nies in­vest­ing their time in char­i­ta­ble works in grow­ing youth. Del­la Casa asked, "If this pro­gramme can save one child from be­com­ing

a crim­i­nal down the road, why not give the com­pa­ny a cred­it for it?" She de­scribed the plans say­ing, "The sav­ings as­so­ci­at­ed with the Lead­er­ship Lega­cy of Youth will be an an­nu­al cred­it that will be al­lowed to com­pa­nies who in­vest the so­cial eq­ui­ty of their em­ploy­ees time (up to a cer­tain amount of care­ful­ly con­trolled hours) per year in le­git­i­mate char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tions fo­cussing on youth de­vel­op­ment and lead­er­ship," she said. One of the or­gan­i­sa­tions ad­vi­so­ry board mem­bers, Anil Seeter­ram, ex­plained the sig­nif­i­cance. "Gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ing tax in­cen­tives to busi­ness­es does pro­vide them with an im­me­di­ate fi­nan­cial ben­e­fit. How­ev­er, the broad­er pol­i­cy ob­jec­tive of these tax in­cen­tives is to cre­ate aware­ness of a so­cial need. "Once this need has been high­light­ed, ac­tions can fol­low that will re­in­force the mu­tu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial re­la­tion­ship be­tween busi­ness and the com­mu­ni­ty," he said.