JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, March 16, 2025

Don La Foucade a Beacon of Hope for Youths

by

20120602

Sha­had Ali

Se­nior Press Pass Cor­re­spon­dent

Of­ten de­scribed as a bea­con of hope for youths in Trinidad and To­ba­go, Don La Fou­cade has suc­cess­ful­ly launched his newest pub­li­ca­tion, en­ti­tled 'Fac­ing the Storms of Life...In Full Flight!' The pri­vate launch took place at the Na­tion­al Li­brary in Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day 26th May, with close friends, rel­a­tives and sup­port­ers. The in­spi­ra­tional book is the sec­ond pro­duced by La Fou­cade. It pri­mar­i­ly com­pris­es of the ar­ti­cles that he has writ­ten in the Guardian's gieMAGAZINE. It is not sim­ply a col­lec­tion of in­spi­ra­tional and mo­ti­va­tion­al ar­ti­cles, but al­so in­cludes a work­book for some form of self as­sess­ment. Speak­ing at the launch, For­mer First La­dy, Mrs. Za­lay­har Has­sanali stat­ed: "This is what Don want­ed to do and he is so good at it. They (the chil­dren) love to hear him speak, es­pe­cial­ly when he plays on words." La Fou­cade has made his mo­ti­va­tion­al talks spe­cif­ic to a cer­tain style. He of­ten breaks up many words, much like the style of a Pier­rot Grenade.

The Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Ju­nior Achiev­ers Pro­gramme, J. Er­rol Lewis, al­so had pos­i­tive things to say about La Fou­cade's work. He stat­ed, "Don was born to work with young peo­ple". Lewis took the gath­er­ing down mem­o­ry lane as he re­count­ed his first meet­ing with La Fou­cade at the Young Lead­ers pro­gramme. He then in­sist­ed that "Don has found his niche and has de­vel­oped us all". Al­so speak­ing at the launch was Pamela Fran­cis, CEO of Unit­ed Way Trinidad and To­ba­go. She re­called La Fou­cade's first ap­proach for spon­sor­ship for work­shops to be held in Sec­ondary Schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go. Her com­pa­ny along with British Pe­tro­le­um Trinidad and To­ba­go (BPTT) took up on the of­fer, which soon led to the de­c­la­ra­tion of a very suc­cess­ful ini­tia­tive. Ed­i­tor of gieMAGAZINE, Bav­ina Sookdeo, ex­pressed amaze­ment when she had first met La Fou­cade at the Sec­ondary School's Lead­er­ship Sym­po­sium (held by Guardian's Sport Desk). "He had 300 sec­ondary school stu­dents eat­ing out of his hands" she ex­claimed. As such, Sookdeo did not hes­i­tate in ask­ing La Fou­cade to write for the mag­a­zine on a week­ly ba­sis. These ar­ti­cles have now been pub­lished in a sin­gle book, for the ben­e­fit of the en­tire na­tion.

For a man of many words, Don La Fou­cade took the front of the au­di­to­ri­um in tears, ex­press­ing how dif­fi­cult it was to speak. "We are ei­ther part of the prob­lem or part of the so­lu­tion" he stat­ed. He told the crowd that his de­ci­sion to leave the bank­ing in­dus­try was not done light heart­ed­ly. He was de­ter­mined to make a dif­fer­ence. He ex­pressed how dif­fi­cult it could be with a de­mand­ing sched­ule, some­times hav­ing to trav­el to many points of the coun­try in one day. "We have thou­sands of young, hurt­ing peo­ple in this coun­try" the in­spi­ra­tional speak­er stat­ed. He added that his long jour­ney makes the biggest dif­fer­ence when a child ap­proach­es him af­ter a talk and says "Sir I am glad I heard you talk, be­cause I was about to take my life." At this point tears were welling up in La Fou­cade's eyes. He con­tin­ued to re­count some of his ex­pe­ri­ences, stat­ing that he spoke with youths who have tak­en lives be­cause of the mere fact that peo­ple around them do not care. "The young peo­ple need some­one to put home in their lives" re­it­er­at­ing the need for such val­ues in a child's life. He men­tioned that every time he vis­its the Youth Train­ing Cen­tre many of the young boys would flock around him, for that des­per­ate need of a fa­ther fig­ure in their life. "It's re­al­ly quite a sad thing to see" he said. The launch came to a close with some light re­fresh­ments, along with a book sign­ing by La Fou­cade. The au­di­ence was treat­ed to dra­mat­ic per­for­mances by the Steven Ed­wards pro­duc­tion group, keep­ing the pro­ceed­ings quite en­ter­tain­ing and en­gag­ing.

Look out for

Don La Fou­cade's lat­est book 'Fac­ing the Storms of Life... In Full Flight' at a

book­store near you.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored