Ab­dul Ol­livierre is a re­lent­less young in­di­vid­ual who does not let any chal­lenge keep him back as he pur­sues his life and ca­reer goals.

This is al­though his life was dealt what many felt was a cru­el blow in 2017, when, at the ten­der age of 14, Ol­livierre lost his low­er left leg due to a poor blood cir­cu­la­tion prob­lem that threat­ened his vi­tal or­gans. Doc­tors ini­tial­ly fought to save his leg but even­tu­al­ly had no choice but to am­pu­tate it to save his life.

Yet, since then he has re­fused to let his dis­abil­i­ty de­fine or lim­it him.

In an ef­fort to ad­vance his life op­tions, Ol­livierre de­cid­ed to take ad­van­tage of gov­ern­ment pro­grammes avail­able to the youth. He was con­vinced by one of his moth­er’s friends to choose the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC), one of the ini­tia­tives un­der the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice (MYDNS) and fa­cil­i­tat­ed by mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force, which fo­cus­es on em­pow­er­ing young peo­ple by teach­ing them var­i­ous tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al skills.

Af­ter be­ing suc­cess­ful­ly en­rolled, Ol­livierre be­gan his CCC jour­ney in Jan­u­ary 2024, mo­ti­vat­ed by a de­sire for self-im­prove­ment. He chose to pur­sue the elec­tri­cal skills course, which in­cludes el­e­ments of prop­er house wiring tech­niques, learn­ing colour cod­ing and how Ohm’s law is ap­plied to elec­tri­cal work.

“I want­ed bet­ter­ment for my­self,” he ex­plained.

Be­fore join­ing the CCC, Ol­livierre de­scribed his life as “less ad­ven­tur­ous,” but he ad­mit­ted that this quick­ly changed as he em­braced the op­por­tu­ni­ties of­fered by CCC.

He ad­mit­ted that ma­noeu­vring through the course was not as dif­fi­cult as ini­tial­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed.

“De­spite hav­ing one leg, there wasn’t any chal­lenge for me dur­ing the CCC pro­gramme,” Ol­livierre stat­ed proud­ly.

Still, he is ex­empt­ed from cer­tain ar­eas of the mil­i­tary as­pect of the pro­gramme by the fa­cil­i­ta­tors, al­though he en­sures he does what his phys­i­cal at­trib­ut­es al­low him to.

“I am able to do most if not all of the turns stand­ing at at­ten­tion, stand­ing at ease ... on­ly thing that I used to ex­it for was march­ing be­cause it would be dif­fi­cult to do it with crutch­es, worse yet one leg,” he said jok­ing­ly.

He ad­mit­ted to feel­ing a sense of sad­ness at this sit­u­a­tion though.

“I re­al­ly want­ed to be­come a sol­dier and be­fore los­ing my leg I was a cadet, so I miss the train­ing and stuff a lot,” he said, not­ing his first ca­reer path as­pi­ra­tion when he joined the T&T Cadet Force as a stu­dent at Mal­ick Sec­ondary in 2016.

Ol­livierre now read­i­ly ad­mits his ex­pe­ri­ence in the CCC pro­gramme has com­plete­ly changed his life. He al­so said his par­tic­i­pa­tion has helped boost his con­fi­dence in fac­ing chal­lenges.

Asked about his men­tors, his thoughts turned to his late fa­ther Ju­nior Ol­livierre, who was bet­ter known in the com­mu­ni­ty as Ab­dul Ka­reem. “My fa­ther had al­ways been there for me; a great ex­am­ple of a man and an even bet­ter ex­am­ple as a fa­ther,” he re­flect­ed.

“I was with him up un­til his last breath.”

De­spite the pain of that loss, he car­ries his fa­ther’s mem­o­ry as a source of in­spi­ra­tion.

He al­so spoke high­ly of the sup­port he’s re­ceived at CCC.

“Every­one in the North West Re­gion is cool with me, all the trainees show me love and re­spect,” he said.

He al­so praised his team com­man­der Cpl Al­pha Moore and staff, de­scrib­ing their sup­port as “over­whelm­ing” and “great.”

Now, at the age of 21, Ol­livierre has al­ready tri­umphed over con­sid­er­able ob­sta­cles and is on the verge of grad­u­at­ing from the CCC’s North West Re­gion’s Cy­cle 2401 on Tues­day at NA­PA, Port-of-Spain. His batch had an in­take of over 100 trainees but over­all, some 800-plus trainees are due to grad­u­ate from the cur­rent cy­cle.

Look­ing ahead, Ol­livierre has am­bi­tious goals.

“I have plans of open­ing my own elec­tri­cal busi­ness and al­so start­ing a car rental busi­ness be­cause of my love for au­to­mo­biles,” he shared.

“The CCC pro­gramme has fur­ther mo­ti­vat­ed me to achieve these goals.”

This ac­tiv­i­ty will prob­a­bly fall right in­to the Barataria res­i­dent’s gar­den, as his com­mit­ment to com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice is al­so ev­i­dent. He al­ready par­tic­i­pates an­nu­al­ly in dri­ves to dis­trib­ute clothes to the less for­tu­nate.

For young adults con­sid­er­ing join­ing CCC or any oth­er pro­grammes avail­able to youths, his ad­vice is clear.

“Join and make the best of it be­cause it brings a lot of op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

He al­so ex­pressed hope that the min­istry will con­tin­ue fund­ing the CCC “so that fu­ture gen­er­a­tions can ex­pe­ri­ence this life-chang­ing pro­gramme.”

Ol­livierre’s sto­ry is not just one of per­son­al achieve­ment, but an ex­am­ple of how pro­grammes like CCC pro­vide cru­cial sup­port and op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple, re­gard­less of their cir­cum­stances. His jour­ney con­tin­ues to in­spire his peers and the staff at CCC, prov­ing that with de­ter­mi­na­tion and the right sup­port, one can over­come any ob­sta­cle.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate the chance giv­en to me by the gov­ern­ment and ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pate my grad­u­a­tion,” Ol­livierre said.