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.