Cre­at­ing a last­ing im­pact in T&T re­quires the next gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers to be strong lead­ers in a num­ber of fields. This is what the lo­cal NGO, the He­roes Foun­da­tion, seeks to do with their He­roes De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (HDP).

The pro­gramme aims to in­stil with­in its par­tic­i­pants, the es­sen­tial skills need­ed to lead T&T in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry.

ANSA McAL yes­ter­day an­nounced that it will in­ject $300,000 in­to the NGO’s pro­gramme to cov­er the costs of staffing, coach­ing, events, and oth­er ex­pens­es.

As a re­sult of this, more than 45 stu­dents from Mara­bel­la South, Bel­mont Sec­ondary and Wood­brook Sec­ondary Schools will ben­e­fit from the pro­vi­sions of the pro­gramme, which fo­cus­es on their psy­choso­cial de­vel­op­ment.

Par­tic­i­pants will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain skills in dig­i­tal lit­er­a­cy, en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness, fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy, con­flict res­o­lu­tion and prob­lem-solv­ing. The pro­gramme’s frame­work en­tails three years of blend­ed in­ter­ac­tive skills de­vel­op­ment de­liv­ered to lo­cal and mi­grant Eng­lish and Span­ish-speak­ing chil­dren.

He­roes Foun­da­tion CEO Lawrence Ar­joon said a note­wor­thy mark of the pro­gramme’s in­flu­ence has been its ef­fec­tive­ness in re­duc­ing stu­dent vi­o­lence.

“Nine­ty-three per cent can bet­ter man­age chal­lenges and con­flicts. We saw that es­pe­cial­ly in year one when they (stu­dents) came back out to school with the spike we had in school vi­o­lence be­cause they went through a trau­mat­ic pe­ri­od. And we worked with the schools, we worked with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. A lot of the ini­tia­tives and pro­grammes that the chil­dren im­ple­ment­ed in the schools ... we saw a big de­crease, a swift de­crease, of school vi­o­lence,” Ar­joon said.

In her re­marks at the cer­e­mo­ny at TATIL head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain, head of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at ANSA McAL, Sarah In­gle­field, said she was hum­bled by the per­se­ver­ance of the stu­dents.

“I was tru­ly hum­bled by their courage, their pas­sion, their tenac­i­ty. And it’s re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing to see be­cause de­spite all we hear about the chal­lenges in schools, in homes, and in the com­mu­ni­ties to­day, the stu­dents still have that pas­sion, that fire in­side of them. And what we’re here to do is to be en­ablers of the great work and fu­ture that they can cre­ate,” In­gle­field said.

Jahziel John, a Form Two stu­dent from the Wood­brook Sec­ondary School, cred­it­ed the pro­gramme for giv­ing him clar­i­ty on who he want­ed to be in the fu­ture.

“My ex­pe­ri­ence with He­roes Foun­da­tion was noth­ing but pos­i­tive. From the day I en­tered it was fun. This al­lowed us to shape our fu­ture in one of our last mod­ules [on] fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy and road map­ping. This al­lowed me to pick the ca­reer I want­ed,” he said.

“In Form One, I had no clue who I want­ed to be, but with the help of the foun­da­tion, I nar­rowed my as­pects to one thing: a lawyer in crim­i­nal law,” he added.