In an at­tempt to pre­vent the stu­dents of her school from "falling through the cracks", vice-prin­ci­pal of Ari­ma North Sec­ondary School, Ar­i­anne Gar­cia-D'Abreau, es­tab­lished the pro­gramme Ig­nite: Find­ing Your Pur­pose.

The ob­jec­tive, she said, is to make them skilled and pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens, thus be­com­ing ex­am­ples to their peers and their com­mu­ni­ties.

She ex­plained that af­ter look­ing through the school's da­ta on dis­ci­pline, she dis­cov­ered many stu­dents over the last aca­d­e­m­ic year were sus­pend­ed more than once. Of these stu­dents, four boys, in par­tic­u­lar, were sus­pend­ed more than six times and re­turned to school on­ly to com­mit the same of­fences.

Gar­cia-D'Abreau said she could not turn a blind eye to this and knew straight away some­thing need­ed to be done.

With the help of sev­er­al stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing so­cial work­ers, guid­ance of­fi­cers, the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice, Li­ons Clubs In­ter­na­tion­al, NPTA (Na­tion­al Par­ents and Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion) and MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, Ig­nite was launched on April 7, 2019, at the Cipri­ani Labour Col­lege, and at­tract­ed stu­dents from sev­er­al schools in the North East­ern Dis­trict.

More than just form­ing an­oth­er "at-risk" youth pro­gramme, Gar­cia-D'Abreau told Sun­day Guardian that she want­ed to en­sure the ini­tia­tives met the re­al­is­tic needs of these young peo­ple, hence much thought and plan­ning went in­to the op­er­a­tional struc­ture of the pro­gramme. She said even choos­ing the name was im­por­tant as "Ig­nite" rep­re­sents and sym­bol­is­es the awak­en­ing of one's true po­ten­tial.

Cur­rent­ly, it tack­les six core ar­eas, help­ful in young peo­ple lead­ing suc­cess­ful and "con­flict-free" lives. They are pur­pose, de­pres­sion, dis­re­spect, de­fi­ance, bul­ly­ing, and ag­gres­sion.

The pro­gramme al­so fa­cil­i­tates coun­selling, ca­reer guid­ance, em­ploy­ment train­ing, and parental sup­port and in­volve­ment. The lat­ter in­volves 36 con­tact hours and is as­sist­ed by the NPTA and Li­on Quest via Li­ons Clubs In­ter­na­tion­al. Li­on Quest is a life skills and pre­ven­tion pro­gramme of Li­ons Clubs In­ter­na­tion­al Foun­da­tion, im­ple­ment­ed in more than 50 coun­tries around the world, in­clud­ing T&T.

Ac­cord­ing to Gar­cia-D'Abreau this par­tic­u­lar train­ing is to teach par­ents the val­ue of be­ing ac­tive­ly in­volved in their chil­dren's lives, there­by strength­en­ing the be­hav­iours, skills, and at­ti­tudes, which es­sen­tial­ly pro­motes the phys­i­cal, men­tal and over­all well-be­ing of their chil­dren.

Gar­cia-D'Abreau al­so made spe­cial men­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice's role and func­tion in Ig­nite. She said this as­pect of the pro­gramme was vi­tal in cre­at­ing safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ments for all.

"It is polic­ing where­by the peo­ple take an ac­tive part in their own af­fairs; the po­lice are not seen as a prob­lem or stranger, whose pres­ence stand for dan­ger but as part­ners in de­vel­op­ment," she ex­plains.

The com­mu­ni­ty po­lice will be vis­it­ing the com­mu­ni­ties and the homes of the se­lect­ed par­tic­i­pants of Ig­nite. They would as­sist in the mon­i­tor­ing of the se­lect­ed stu­dents and would li­aise once a week with the co­or­di­na­tors of the pro­gramme. Their in­volve­ment al­so en­tails col­lab­o­rat­ing with the school's so­cial work­er. They would al­so track the progress of the stu­dent out­side of school.

The pro­gramme we learned, isn't on­ly ex­tend­ed to stu­dents of the Ari­ma North Sec­ondary School, but to all sec­ondary school stu­dents, how­ev­er, be­cause the ini­tia­tive re­lies heav­i­ly on vol­un­teerism, schools that are not af­fil­i­at­ed with Li­on Quest to as­sist in free train­ing, these schools would have to utilise oth­er pro­fes­sion­als will­ing to vol­un­teer.

Asked what she thought would be the true suc­cess sto­ry of Ig­nite, Gar­cia-D'Abreau says, "See­ing the true po­ten­tial of a young man or woman come to life—see­ing them take the right path."