The Foot­ball 7s As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T and the Mis­cel­la­neous Group have signed a part­ner­ship deal with the In­ter Agency Task Force for this year's tour­na­ment at St Paul's Street Mul­ti Pur­pose Com­plex, Port-of-Spain.

The tour­na­ment, ti­tled "Hearts and Minds" Foot­ball Tour­na­ment was launched last Sat­ur­day and is geared to­wards pro­vid­ing long term so­cial ben­e­fits to young peo­ple.

The ini­tia­tive was al­so es­tab­lished to help curb the high lev­el of crime with­in com­mu­ni­ties and as­sist young peo­ple cope with life's chal­lenges, while chan­nelling their en­er­gies in­to pos­i­tive and healthy lifestyles. The part­ner­ship is al­so aimed at en­hanc­ing the abil­i­ties of the youth in the ar­eas of sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties.

A re­lease yes­ter­day stat­ed that by wear­ing a uni­form, young peo­ple will feel a sense of equal­i­ty, re­gard­less of their di­verse back­ground. It added that sports and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties can give youths a sense of be­long­ing, loy­al­ty and sup­port, which may en­able them to re­sist thoughts of sui­cide, tru­an­cy and the need to use il­lic­it drugs.

The tour­na­ment will run un­der the aus­pices of the Foot­ball 7 As­so­ci­a­tion. Mis­cel­la­neous will of­fer sup­port through uni­forms for all teams, foot­balls, match­day of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing qual­i­fied ref­er­ees, equip­ment, prizes and oth­er forms of sup­port.

Fitzger­ald Hinds, Mem­ber for Laven­tille West and Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port en­dorsed the tour­na­ment and com­mend­ed Mis­cel­la­neous for sup­port­ing it. Ac­cord­ing to Hinds; "My first feel­ing is one of hap­pi­ness, hope and ex­cite­ment. I just walked the grounds and I saw hun­dreds of young peo­ple of the com­mu­ni­ty all very keen to get in­volved in some­thing they like, some­thing that as Caribbean peo­ple, we have a nat­ur­al pas­sion for and more specif­i­cal­ly as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, which is foot­ball."

He not­ed "I think it is very ex­cit­ing that the Hearts and Minds of the IATF of the Po­lice Ser­vice in con­junc­tion with Mis­cel­la­neous, would come to­geth­er to use this very at­trac­tive busi­ness of foot­ball to bring the young­sters to­geth­er and then once they are close, to work on their hearts and minds so that we can pre­pare them for the pro­duc­tive and pros­per­ous lives that they will lead whether they stay in it or whether they ven­ture in­to oth­er things.

I en­dorse it ful­ly and as a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Laven­tille, I wel­come it ful­ly be­cause I know we have so much tal­ent and hope here. This pro­gramme is a path to well­ness, hap­pi­ness and achieve­ment. "

Joan Mendez, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs par­tic­i­pat­ed in the of­fi­cial kick-off to start the com­pe­ti­tion.

Ac­tion saw Laven­tille Unit­ed de­feat­ing Bev­er­ly Hills 2-0 in an open­ing ex­hi­bi­tion match on Sat­ur­day but the Bev­er­ly Hills men re­bound­ed by trounc­ing Dun­can Street in the first com­pet­i­tive match 6-0 cour­tesy a hat-trick by Isa­iah Lewis in the Un­der 25 play-off on Tues­day. Ker­ron Boyce al­so got on the score­sheet with a dou­ble strike while Cur­tis Ro­many got the oth­er in Bev­er­ly Hills' win.

The tour­ney will run for the next two months with a dozen teams com­pet­ing. The tour­na­ment has been a step­ping ground for many ex-na­tion­al play­ers such as Stern John, Gary Glas­gow, Cur­tis Gon­za­les, Kevin Gra­ham, Rus­sell Lat­apy, Den­sill Theobald, Arnold Dwari­ka, Ker­wyn Jem­mot, Nigel Pierre ands Au­r­tis Whit­t­ley among oth­ers.