Bri­an Lewis

Re­cent­ly, I was re­view­ing the pro­grammes and work un­der­tak­en over the past 17 years by the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC).

One pro­gramme that has had a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact is the TTOC's com­mu­ni­ty based sport and recre­ation pro­grammes.

The con­cept be­hind the com­mu­ni­ty pro­grammes is built on the TTOC work­ing along and side by side with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in sport, in­clud­ing na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions, coach­es, ath­letes, oth­er sport lead­ers, cor­po­rate part­ners and gov­ern­ment.

An ex­am­ple of such a pro­gramme would have been the Shape the Com­mu­ni­ty pro­gramme in Point Fortin which was an am­bi­tious pro­gramme that set out to fill gaps in sport ed­u­ca­tion in the com­mu­ni­ty through the train­ing of com­mu­ni­ty coach­es and the in­volve­ment of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, schools, NSOs and oth­er part­ners.

Shape your Com­mu­ni­ty fo­cused on in­te­grat­ing sus­tain­able sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty in­to the lives of the youth and el­der­ly.

In con­junc­tion with At­lantic LNG, the TTOC af­ford­ed chil­dren from pri­ma­ry schools in Point Fortin the op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in sports that they would not nor­mal­ly be ex­posed to dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2008–2013.

In Oc­to­ber 2008, the TTOC launched its lega­cy pro­gramme, Shape the Com­mu­ni­ty. The ob­jec­tives of the pro­gramme in the com­mu­ni­ty are:

�2 In­crease par­tic­i­pa­tion in sport, recre­ation and phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion across all age groups in the com­mu­ni­ties

�2 In­te­grate phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes in pri­ma­ry schools

�2 In­crease cor­po­rate in­volve­ment in the de­vel­op­ment of youth through sport

�2 De­vel­op coach­ing as a pro­fes­sion

�2 Cre­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for the pro­fes­sion of coach­ing

�2 Ex­pose youth to sports of vary­ing types in a struc­tured man­ner

�2 In­crease the reach of the TTOC's and the IOC's vi­sion and goals for Olymp­ism

�2 Es­tab­lish a de­vel­op­men­tal path­way for sport in the com­mu­ni­ties in col­lab­o­ra­tion with na­tion­al sport or­gan­i­sa­tions and the Min­istry of Sport.

Point Fortin was cho­sen as the pi­lot com­mu­ni­ty. Ten pri­ma­ry schools in Point Fortin were cho­sen to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gramme af­ter care­ful con­sul­ta­tion with prin­ci­pals and teach­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty, the three sports cho­sen were ten­nis, swim­ming and gym­nas­tics.

Train­ing and par­tic­i­pa­tion took place be­tween Mon­days and Fri­days. Each ses­sion was one hour long and each class was as­signed four hours of ac­tiv­i­ty per month.

The TTOC arranged for the chil­dren and su­per­vis­ing teach­ers to be trans­port­ed to the var­i­ous venues. Coach­es and vol­un­teers were all re­cruit­ed from with­in the com­mu­ni­ty of Point Fortin.

The Point Fortin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion sup­port­ed the pro­gramme by waiv­ing the fees for the use of their fa­cil­i­ties–the Point Fortin Civic Cen­tre, the Ba­by Lu­cas and Guapo Recre­ation­al Grounds.

Swim­ming took place at the Point Fortin com­mu­ni­ty swim­ming pool in Egypt Vil­lage.

The gym­nas­tics pro­gramme took place at the South West re­gion­al in­door fa­cil­i­ty.

Coach­es were ex­posed to train­ing along with the vol­un­teers.

The Shape your Com­mu­ni­ty pro­gramme was ex­tend­ed to Ma­yaro with plans to take the pro­gramme to oth­er com­mu­ni­ties and was eval­u­at­ed by re­searchers at the Sport and Leisure Acad­e­my at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T.

The in­ten­tion of the eval­u­a­tion in­clud­ed high­light­ing chal­lenges, to work out so­lu­tions to these chal­lenges, and to es­tab­lish base­line mea­sures for oth­er com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try.

The Shape your Com­mu­ni­ty project was the brain­child of TTOC past pres­i­dent Lar­ry Ro­many. It is a pro­gramme that made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence and showed that Olymp­ism, the Olympic val­ues and ideals had prac­ti­cal ap­pli­ca­tion and wasn't just a neb­u­lous ide­al­is­tic no­tion.

On be­half of the TTOC I wish every­one a Mer­ry Christ­mas. Be safe and keep Christ in Christ­mas. He is the rea­son for the sea­son.

Ed­i­tor's note: Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee. The views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee.