An­na-Lisa Paul

As the world ob­served Na­tion­al Slav­ery and Hu­man Traf­fick­ing Pre­ven­tion Month in Jan­u­ary, stu­dents of the El Do­ra­do West Sec­ondary School ac­cept­ed the chal­lenge to in­crease pub­lic aware­ness by cre­at­ing a Free­dom Wall. The stu­dents in­tend to ex­pand the project to cre­ate a Free­dom Cor­ner at the school.

The Form Four Ge­og­ra­phy and Art Club stu­dents em­braced the chal­lenge and each oth­er to im­prove the school’s im­age pub­licly, whilst si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ex­press­ing sup­port for the world­wide cause, as the world marked the day on Jan­u­ary 11.

Ameer Baksh said, "We chose the top­ic traf­fick­ing be­cause there are so many dif­fer­ent types of traf­fick­ing that per­sons are not aware of. Our lo­cal sit­u­a­tion may not be at a bad stage as it is in some of the larg­er coun­tries like In­dia, but it is some­thing we need to raise aware­ness about."

Chal­leng­ing stu­dents in oth­er schools to launch sim­i­lar projects, Baksh echoed his class­mates' con­cerns, "It was a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to let oth­er stu­dents know what is go­ing on in the world and al­so in T&T be­cause some of us are shel­tered and do not even know what is hap­pen­ing."

Point­ing to the Free­dom Wall on which a pic­ture of the world had been paint­ed in­side a heart with wings and ringed with a blue rib­bon and the stu­dents' hand­prints sur­round­ing it, Justin Walk­er ex­plained, "With all the colours, we want­ed to show how we are in T&T as this coun­try is made up of all dif­fer­ent colours and races. It shows how free we are in this coun­try to do al­most any­thing and it al­so em­pha­sis­es how we can come to­geth­er as one peo­ple and do so many great things as kids and adults."

Hop­ing their ef­forts would not on­ly raise the school’s im­age but al­so en­cour­age oth­er stu­dents to get in­volved in pos­i­tive projects, Walk­er said fu­ture plans in­clud­ed cre­at­ing a sculp­ture in the hopes of in­creas­ing aware­ness about oth­er se­ri­ous is­sues.

Mya Charles said, "We do not even re­alise how lucky we are here in T&T…we take a lot for grant­ed."

Nod­ding their heads in agree­ment were stu­dents Roshan Bansee and Vali­ni Ram­dass who urged oth­er teenagers to pay greater at­ten­tion to the is­sues af­fect­ing peo­ple lo­cal­ly and fur­ther afield as they said this was the on­ly way aware­ness lev­els could be in­creased and so­lu­tions found.

Art Club leader Rhadi­ka Hinds spoke of the new friend­ships that had been forged dur­ing the project.

Heart­ened by the team ef­fort and co­op­er­a­tion, Hinds said the paint­ing al­so sought to con­vey the mes­sage that "The rib­bon sur­round­ing the Earth was meant to show that every­body in this world has the same red blood run­ning through their veins and that we are all built the same. No­body is dif­fer­ent…every­body de­serves equal­i­ty and free­dom."

Bran­don Ma­haraj said, "We had a whole load of trou­ble and learn­ing to trust one an­oth­er but it was worth it."

Rashad Abra­ham said the idea was born af­ter Form Teacher Mal­a­daye Baksh urged the stu­dents to think about how they could high­light the oc­ca­sion.

Samuel Gra­ham and Jasi­ah Franklin said they took five days to com­plete the project which not on­ly served to beau­ti­fy the school but al­so en­cour­ages stu­dents in the low­er forms to wit­ness how hard work and ded­i­ca­tion to a cause could re­sult in tan­gi­ble re­wards and pos­i­tive out­comes.

Gra­ham said, "Even if our school has a rep­u­ta­tion, we don’t de­serve to be brought down. Peo­ple can change and al­though we have been brand­ed by that out­side…there are good peo­ple here. It will al­ways have neg­a­tives in life but once we per­se­vere, we can look for­ward to a pos­i­tive out­come."

Art Teacher Raynor Ciel­to ex­pressed plea­sure at the re­sponse by the stu­dents—from the Art and Ge­og­ra­phy class­es—as he in­di­cat­ed his in­put was min­i­mal, "I ba­si­cal­ly hand­ed the project to the art group and it was free­dom in a sense for me, to watch them do their thing.

"It was a lib­er­a­tion for them ex­press­ing them­selves. The piece tru­ly de­picts free­dom as it was done in free­dom and shows free­dom."