An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­nal­isa.paul@guardian.co.tt

“It is eas­i­er to build strong chil­dren than to re­pair bro­ken men.”

—Fred­er­ick Dou­glas.

Tak­ing this to heart as they aim to en­cour­age the youth un­der their care in pos­i­tive en­deav­ours and en­sure they stay away from crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty, po­lice of­fi­cers Bevin Alexan­der and Sasha Williams-God­dard have vowed not to give up on the na­tion’s fu­ture lead­ers.

They made this promise while ad­dress­ing pupils who re­ceived their Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am re­sults this week, Williams-God­dard, who leads the St Joseph Po­lice Youth Club, and Alexan­der, who is the head of the Mara­cas/St Joseph Po­lice Youth Club—urged the dozen pupils present to al­ways up­hold the law and strive to be bet­ter cit­i­zens.

Speak­ing dur­ing a brunch host­ed by Bite Me Bistro, An­der­son Street, St Au­gus­tine, on Thurs­day, Williams-God­dard said, “Every year we try to make our SEA stu­dents feel spe­cial be­cause we know they work ex­treme­ly hard and it is im­por­tant to re­ward their ef­forts.”

She said it was cru­cial to reach these pupils now as they en­tered the sec­ondary school sys­tem.

She said, “As we can see from the me­dia, most of our chal­lenges are from sec­ondary schools as that is where we are see­ing all of the videos with the fights, all of the delin­quen­cy, the ex­treme drop-outs ... all of that.

“We are see­ing that most­ly in our sec­ondary schools so in this pe­ri­od where they are tran­si­tion­ing, we have to now utilise the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­mind them there are bet­ter op­tions avail­able to them and in­spire them to want bet­ter.”

Williams-God­dard said the award cer­e­mo­ny was a plat­form for of­fi­cers to pour in­to their charges, and “Grab their at­ten­tion be­fore they can get in­to any neg­a­tive be­hav­iour, es­pe­cial­ly as they are now be­gin­ning sec­ondary school.”

Re­veal­ing her club had seen parental in­volve­ment grow­ing with­in re­cent times, she urged oth­ers to get their chil­dren en­rolled now so they con­tin­ue to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in the lives of the youths.

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments as Williams-God­dard, it was a proud Alexan­der that qui­et­ly spoke of the big strides by the Com­mu­ni­ty Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Sec­tion.

Fo­cus­ing on yes­ter­day’s event, he said, “This was to raise the bar for them so they could un­der­stand that when they suc­ceed at cer­tain things, they can be re­ward­ed.”

Re­in­forc­ing their goal to in­crease crime pre­ven­tion, he added, “We are show­ing them there are dif­fer­ent av­enues to take so they don’t have to walk down that road of crim­i­nal­i­ty and crime.”

Supt Ter­rence Now­butt, of the North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, joined in cel­e­brat­ing the young­sters say­ing: “The in­tend­ed out­come is to put them on the right track and en­sure they grow up to be re­spectable cit­i­zens of our coun­try.”

In or­der to avoid them get­ting in­volved in un­to­ward ac­tiv­i­ties, Now­butt added, “We want to see more peo­ple to get in­to po­lice youth clubs.”

Com­mend­ing par­ents, yet call­ing for greater in­put from them as they seek to nur­ture and guide the fu­ture lead­ers, the se­nior of­fi­cer said these ef­forts could on­ly bear fruit if every­one worked to­geth­er.

Part­ner­ing with the two clubs to re­ward the suc­cess­ful stu­dents, of­fi­cials from Bite Me Bistro ex­plained just why they had em­braced the ini­tia­tive.

Un­will­ing to be named, a male rep­re­sen­ta­tive of own­er Ar­vaan Ma­haraj said, “We are do­ing this be­cause we be­lieve the chil­dren are the fu­ture and if we don’t take care of them, they will not take care of us when that time comes, so we have to pro­vide a bet­ter en­vi­ron­ment for them ... a crime free en­vi­ron­ment for them.”

The moth­er of Mse­ma­ji Har­ford, 12, who passed for Aranguez North Sec­ondary School said the youth clubs were akin to, “Hav­ing ad­di­tion­al mom­mies and dad­dies which is a big sup­port.”

Do­minique God­dard, 12, who will be mov­ing on to St Joseph’s Con­vent, St Joseph, said while the SEA ex­am had been chal­leng­ing, she was look­ing for­ward to this new chap­ter in her life.

Re­flect­ing on how the club had changed her, she said the list of ac­tiv­i­ties had helped her to un­der­stand her­self bet­ter and to grow men­tal­ly, which she would need now as she moved on to sec­ondary school.

Agree­ing the SEA had al­so proven to be chal­leng­ing for him, 13-year-old Tshaun Alexan­der said he was ex­cit­ed to con­tin­ue grow­ing with­in the arms of the club as it had, “Taught me to be a bet­ter per­son and al­so how to stay out of trou­ble and vi­o­lence.”

He will be­gin at­tend­ing class­es at the Barataria South Sec­ondary School from Sep­tem­ber.

Smart­ly at­tired in a three-piece black and white suit and hav­ing al­ready set his sights on be­com­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, Josi­ah Ado­nis, 12, will be­gin at­tend­ing the St Au­gus­tine Sec­ondary School in Sep­tem­ber.