Trinidad and To­ba­go - Team TTO’s Par­a­lympic World and Olympic Cham­pi­on Akeem Stew­art is cur­rent­ly in France com­pet­ing for the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic at the Paris 2024 Par­a­lympic Games.

The To­ba­go-born ath­lete has over­come sev­er­al ob­sta­cles and set­backs but he re­mains un­daunt­ed and in­domitable. His ded­i­ca­tion, de­ter­mi­na­tion and courage are above re­proach. Akeem’s mis­sion is mul­ti-faceted. Not on­ly is he rep­re­sent­ing the red, white and black to the best of his abil­i­ty, but his be­ing in Paris holds a mir­ror to the face of T&T.

In ad­di­tion to pro­mot­ing com­pe­ti­tion for ath­letes with dis­abil­i­ties, the Par­a­lympics al­so serves as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for glob­al at­ten­tion and aware­ness. The world is still far away from where it should be. Con­sid­er this - we will ei­ther die too soon or live too long. Should we end up on the live too-long spec­trum - dis­abil­i­ty in some form or fash­ion will oc­cur.

As such re­spect for those with dis­abil­i­ties is nec­es­sary.

The Par­a­lympic Games gives peo­ple around the world the op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­gage, watch, sup­port and cheer on hu­man be­ings who refuse to be de­fined by their dis­abil­i­ties.

Many phys­i­cal­ly dis­abled peo­ple can do phys­i­cal­ly stren­u­ous sports and at a high lev­el of ef­fort and achieve­ment. The Par­a­lympics are com­pet­i­tive. Dis­abled ath­letes work hard and want to win. The ath­leti­cism on dis­play is in­spi­ra­tional.

The Par­a­lympic Games are an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the world’s top dis­abled ath­letes to com­pete. It is al­so a re­minder that peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties have the right to par­tic­i­pate at all lev­els, whether com­pet­i­tive­ly or not.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Par­a­lympic Com­mit­tee, the Par­a­lympics Games fo­cus on val­ues of courage, de­ter­mi­na­tion, in­spi­ra­tion and equal­i­ty.

The Par­a­lympic Games are not on­ly an in­te­gral part of the world­wide sport­ing cal­en­dar, but they al­so play an im­por­tant role in in­spir­ing oth­ers to think dif­fer­ent­ly about dis­abil­i­ty as the largest event world­wide for dri­ving so­cial change.

Par­a­lympians are in­spir­ing fu­ture gen­er­a­tions; how­ev­er, they are al­so part of a wider move­ment that is help­ing to trans­form the lives of oth­ers and change at­ti­tudes to­wards dis­abled peo­ple.

Re­search da­ta con­tends that dis­abled young peo­ple are less like­ly to par­tic­i­pate in a range of sports and ac­tiv­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly play-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ties and fa­cil­i­ties. Dis­abled adults spend less time par­tic­i­pat­ing in any giv­en week than non-dis­abled adults.

The im­pact of the Games can dri­ve ac­tion, con­sen­sus and com­mit­ment to work­ing in part­ner­ship, in­vest­ing and build­ing glob­al, con­ti­nen­tal and na­tion­al ca­pa­bil­i­ty to de­liv­er bet­ter out­comes for dis­abled peo­ple.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Par­a­lympic Com­mit­tee (IPC), the core Par­a­lympic val­ues at the heart of the Par­a­lympic Move­ment are de­ter­mi­na­tion, equal­i­ty, in­spi­ra­tion and courage.

The IPC fur­ther de­fines these val­ues as fol­lows:

Courage: It en­com­pass­es the unique spir­it of the Par­a­lympic ath­lete who seeks to ac­com­plish what the gen­er­al pub­lic deems un­ex­pect­ed, but what the ath­lete knows as a truth.

De­ter­mi­na­tion: The man­i­fes­ta­tion of the idea that Par­a­lympic ath­letes push their phys­i­cal abil­i­ty to the ab­solute lim­it.

In­spi­ra­tion: When in­tense and per­son­al af­fec­tion is be­got­ten from the sto­ries and ac­com­plish­ments of Par­a­lympic ath­letes, and the ef­fect is ap­ply­ing this spir­it to one’s per­son­al life.

Equal­i­ty: Par­a­lympic Sport acts as an agent for change to break down so­cial bar­ri­ers of dis­crim­i­na­tion for per­sons with an im­pair­ment.

The re­al­i­ty ex­pe­ri­enced by dis­abled per­sons glob­al­ly falls way short of ac­cept­able stan­dards. T&T is not an ex­cep­tion.

The Par­a­lympic Games al­low each of us to look in the mir­ror.

Are our na­tion­al gov­ern­ing bod­ies and all rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties giv­ing im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tion and tak­ing the need­ed ac­tion to in­clude dis­abled per­sons in all as­pects of sport and na­tion­al life in T&T?