Anand Ram­per­sad

?Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Sport Pol­i­cy (2002), "Be­cause of the known health, so­cial and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits which can be de­rived from par­tic­i­pat­ing in sport, it can be deemed as im­por­tant as any oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty or field of en­deav­our to the to­tal de­vel­op­ment of the in­di­vid­ual and the so­ci­ety. Reg­u­lar in­volve­ment in sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty are fun­da­men­tal to good health and well­ness at all stages of life. Sport pro­vides an im­por­tant en­vi­ron­ment for the ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial­iza­tion of all cit­i­zens as well as valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ties for per­son­al en­joy­ment, so­cial con­tacts and in­te­gra­tion." .

There­fore, the avail­abil­i­ty of qual­i­ty sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties is crit­i­cal for sport to con­tribute to the well-be­ing of in­di­vid­u­als, com­mu­ni­ties and the sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

In re­cent years there has been the con­struc­tion of foot­ball and ath­let­ics sta­dia, mul­ti-sport in­door fa­cil­i­ties, up­grades of recre­ation­al grounds, the ren­o­va­tion of pavil­ions, the in­stal­la­tion of flood­lights, the pro­vi­sion of recre­ation­al items such as swings, slides etc and the cre­ation of paved walk­ing and jog­ging path­ways. In 2015, the na­tion­al cy­cling cen­tre, aquat­ic cen­tre and ten­nis cen­tre are to be added to the list of avail­able fa­cil­i­ties.

How­ev­er, some of these fa­cil­i­ties have be­come eye­sores and are bla­tant ex­am­ples of wastage of tax­pay­ers' monies. The Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um is al­ready nine (9) years late to its pro­ject­ed open­ing!! A third ICC World Cup (2007, 2011 and 2015) will be staged and the fa­cil­i­ty is still not yet ready!! Walk­er Park is in a di­lap­i­dat­ed state.

It is com­mon to see many sport­ing and recre­ation­al fa­cil­i­ties un­used whether day and or night by the gen­er­al pub­lic. The chal­lenge is get­ting the gen­er­al pub­lic to use the fa­cil­i­ties fre­quent­ly and in great num­bers. How can this be achieved? There may not be a one size fit all an­swer. For in­stance, ur­ban lifestyles may be dif­fer­ent from rur­al ar­eas and as such the ap­proach tak­en would have to be dif­fer­ent.

Sport New Zealand has es­tab­lished a na­tion­al Sport­ing Fa­cil­i­ties Frame­work to get the best val­ue from its sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties. In Eng­land, the De­part­ment for Cul­ture, Me­dia and Sport have part­nered with Sport Eng­land iden­ti­fy­ing five (5) ar­eas to­ward cre­at­ing a sport­ing habit for life as part of its youth sport strat­e­gy. These in­clude: com­pet­i­tive sport in schools; im­prov­ing links be­tween schools and com­mu­ni­ty sports clubs; work­ing with the sport's gov­ern­ing bod­ies fo­cus­ing on youth; in­vest­ing in fa­cil­i­ties and work­ing with com­mu­ni­ties and the vol­un­tary sec­tor.

In T&T, lessons can be learnt from the ap­proach­es un­der­tak­en in Eng­land and New Zealand. First­ly, there must be a strate­gic plan with an ef­fi­cient­ly func­tion­ing man­age­ment sys­tem. Such a sys­tem would in­clude all the ma­jor stake­hold­ers' such as the Min­istry of Sport, SPORTT, Min­istries of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Gen­der and Youth and Ed­u­ca­tion; Na­tion­al Sport­ing As­so­ci­a­tions and com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tives. This in­te­gra­tive frame­work should pro­vide crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion about var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties based on age, gen­der, re­li­gion, per­sons with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties, num­ber of schools and us­age of fa­cil­i­ties and type of ex­ist­ing sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties.

Sec­ond­ly, it has to be so­ci­o­log­i­cal­ly un­der­stood that the pro­vi­sion of sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties will not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­sult in their use. And in some in­stances if the fa­cil­i­ties are used it may not be for the in­tend­ed pur­pose. This was the case dur­ing the NAR regime (1986-91) when bas­ket­ball courts were laid in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties. In cen­tral Trinidad many of the courts were used to play wind­ball crick­et or small goal. In oth­er words it is im­por­tant to have dis­cus­sions with the com­mu­ni­ties. Not on­ly is it im­por­tant to lis­ten to the voice of the peo­ple but it al­so em­pow­ers them in mak­ing de­ci­sions that will af­fect them.

Third­ly, the in­for­ma­tion would al­low for ef­fec­tive plan­ning and im­ple­men­ta­tion. For in­stance, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing be­tween new and ex­ist­ing users of sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties is im­por­tant.

The key is to ex­pand the amount of new users. Fur­ther­more, the var­i­ous fac­tors (re­li­gious, gen­der, age, dis­abil­i­ties etc) that in­flu­ence di­rect­ly or in­di­rect­ly par­tic­i­pa­tion in phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties will have to be de­ter­mined.

Such an un­der­stand­ing will al­low for de­vel­op­ing new strate­gies from time to time to keep peo­ple ac­tive­ly in­volved. As such fun and en­joy­ment has to be an in­te­gral part of the mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy of the var­i­ous mea­sures. Fourth­ly, from a mon­i­tor­ing per­spec­tive it is im­por­tant that base­line da­ta is up­dat­ed with new da­ta over time so as to mea­sure trends such as dropout rates and when these take place. Fur­ther­more, the da­ta col­lect­ed will help in as­sess­ing de­sired out­comes as well as de­ter­min­ing the steps to be tak­en to im­prove all pro­grammes.

Every ef­fort should be made to en­sure that the sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties that are avail­able are put to ef­fec­tive use to jus­ti­fy the eco­nom­ic and so­cial ex­pen­di­ture.

A strate­gic ap­proach of­fers greater pos­si­bil­i­ties of mea­sured suc­cess than the hope that peo­ple will nat­u­ral­ly use the sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties if they are made avail­able.