Cherisse Moe

In to­day's so­ci­ety, which leaves lit­tle room for mis­takes, the op­por­tu­ni­ty for young pris­on­ers to re­deem them­selves are few and far be­tween. Of­ten, they're writ­ten off as men­aces and brand­ed as hope­less, good for noth­ing bums. How­ev­er, in­sti­tu­tions like the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre (YTC) are of­fer­ing a glim­mer of hope to the na­tion's youth who've de­vi­at­ed from the straight and nar­row. Last De­cem­ber, 33 young of­fend­ers, who are re­ferred to at the YTC as "lads" and not in­mates, got a much need­ed chance to show­case their tal­ents by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Prime Min­is­ter's Best Vil­lage Tro­phy Com­pe­ti­tion.

De­spite their cir­cum­stances, the lads proved that they could stack up against the best, cop­ping the prize for Most Spir­it­ed Per­for­mance and earn­ing sec­ond and third places in the Dru­mol­o­gy and The­atre cat­e­gories, re­spec­tive­ly. Even more im­pres­sive, it was the very first time that the young­sters had en­tered such a com­pe­ti­tion.

Brim­ming with pride

Not­ing that the achieve­ment had the lads "brim­ming with pride," YTC's cul­tur­al of­fi­cer Michelle Weekes says it was al­so a step in the right di­rec­tion for the in­sti­tu­tion. "The lads who all be­long to our dra­ma group have been in­volved in a lot of pro­duc­tions over the last three years and they all want­ed to ex­plore their tal­ents, so I ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge." Weekes, who al­so played a lead­ing role in the com­pe­ti­tion, says the 12 songs per­formed for the pro­duc­tion, which car­ried the theme Ghet­to Mes­si­ah, were penned by the lads them­selves. "It was nice to know that we had sur­passed our ex­pec­ta­tions." Spe­cial men­tion must be made of teach­ers Mar­lon George, Kur­tis Gross, De­r­ick Casano­va and El­la An­dall, who lent their ex­per­tise to help the lads pre­pare for the com­pe­ti­tion, as well as YTC's act­ing prin­ci­pal Pa­tri­cia Bat­son, who was al­so an in­te­gral part of the pro­duc­tion.

Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion

Ad­mit­ting that in the re­al world, the life of an ex-in­mate comes with its fair share of chal­lenges, Weekes is op­ti­mistic that her charges have all changed for the bet­ter. "It's go­ing to be hard to start over be­cause of the stig­ma. When they go for a job, the first thing they ask is for a po­lice record. YTC is train­ing them to deal with these ob­sta­cles." "I've seen tremen­dous growth in the boys, both spir­i­tu­al­ly and men­tal­ly." Press­ing for­ward and work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to per­fect their skills, the lads, who've be­come role mod­els to their fel­low coun­ter­parts, are al­ready gear­ing up for the 2010 leg of the com­pe­ti­tion, dubbed For­est Mu­si­cal. And come next month, they'll have yet an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to dis­play their tal­ents, as they're billed to per­form at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' 16th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. Mean­while, YTC vows to con­tin­ue its quest to re­store and re­ha­bil­i­tate T&T's youth and help steer them away from a path of po­ten­tial self de­struc­tion by of­fer­ing them one very im­por­tant thing–hope.