A team of lo­cal en­ter­tain­ers and in­flu­encers are tak­ing a stance against crime with the launch of a cam­paign called UNIT­TY.

Or­lan­do Oc­tave, Isas­ha, Er­phaan Alves, Preedy, Jaron Nurse, DJ Lila and Ran­dal Alexan­der are call­ing on cor­po­rate to join with them.

The cam­paign comes on the heels of the bru­tal mur­ders of four young peo­ple in Ari­ma.

The Heights of Gua­napo in Ari­ma was sent in­to shock af­ter four sib­lings were gunned down as they lay in their beds on ????

Po­lice said Faith Pe­terkin, 10, Ar­i­an­na Pe­terkin, 14, Shane Pe­terkin, 17, and Tiffany Pe­terkin, 19, were asleep in their Grav­el Road Ex­ten­sion, La Re­treat Ex­ten­sion home around 12.25 am when gun­men stormed in.

When the mas­sacre end­ed, the Pe­terkin sib­lings were dead and five oth­ers, in­clud­ing a 14-year-old girl, were wound­ed.

Firm­ly stand­ing up against the vi­o­lence in the coun­try is singer Or­lan­do Oc­tave.

“Mu­sic is one of the most im­por­tant tools we have. We need to start putting pos­i­tive mes­sages out there on a vast scale, just like the neg­a­tive mes­sages are ro­tat­ed,” said Oc­tave.

“We are al­so try­ing to start a big broth­er pro­gramme by part­ner­ing with cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go. We need to take the youths of the street. Clothe them, train them and em­ploy them. We have to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties to get them off the street. It is the gang­sters which help­ing the youth, the ‘com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers’ who are cur­rent­ly buy­ing the books and bags.

“If we do noth­ing about it we are cre­at­ing mon­sters. Chil­dren dy­ing. It is a sad state. It is ter­ri­ble. It is heart break­ing. It is heart­break­ing to see our so­ci­ety crum­bling every­day.”

Al­ready, team UNIT­TY has pro­duced a num­ber of short in­ter­ac­tive videos, en­gag­ing artistes on the top­ic of crime.

In one of the videos, so­ca artiste Preedy, whose re­al name is, Akeem Chance, says he’s learnt that the most pow­er­ful words in the art of war is “I apol­o­gise”. “The prob­lems and the so­lu­tions are right there,” he said, mind­ful­ly telling the world that he will for­ev­er stand for uni­ty.

The videos have been mak­ing the rounds on so­cial me­dia.

Pen­go Mu­sic’s Ran­dal Alexan­der said the over­all mis­sion is to cur­tail crime in our coun­try.

“To give our young boys and girls a fight­ing chance,” he said.

The pro­duc­er who has worked in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try for many years, said he stands firm­ly in sup­port of pos­i­tive re­in­force­ment.

“What we would like to do is trans­form the me­dia’s nar­ra­tive, turn­ing it from neg­a­tive, to pos­i­tive,” he added.

“The loud­est noise is heard from a dis­tance. If that noise is neg­a­tive, a larg­er cross sec­tion of our so­ci­ety feeds on this neg­a­tive noise. We must change that flip­ping it from neg­a­tive to pos­i­tive.”

He said sup­port for the ini­tia­tive is tan­ta­mount to its over­all suc­cess.

“Our mis­sion’s suc­cess is based on the amount of sup­port we re­ceive from peo­ple who have the re­sources to help – peo­ple who want to help,” said Alexan­der.

To­geth­er with the core mem­bers of the team, which in­cludes Oc­tave and events pro­fes­sion­al, Jean Marc Aimey, Alexan­der re­vealed that a num­ber of part­ners have shown in­ter­est and as such, a 100 day ‘POS­I­TIV­I­TY’ cam­paign has been launched.

“This will be the fore­run­ner to the main event – a com­ing to­geth­er, a uni­fy­ing and up­lift­ing con­cert for change – a peace fes­ti­val, which will take place at the close of the year.”

The men be­lieve Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion has tar­nished to a large ex­tent, as a re­sult of crime.

“It’s bet­ter to try and fail than the al­ter­na­tive. This is our coun­try. Our chil­dren and gen­er­a­tions to come, will in­her­it our in­di­vid­ual lega­cies, here, in this land. How can we stand by and watch this place, once con­sid­ered Par­adise, fall apart and not even try to cre­ate change?” Alexan­der asked.

Team UNIT­TY is call­ing on cit­i­zens, and cor­po­ra­tions near and far, to take a leap of faith, in the name of lit­tle Faith and oth­ers like her.

Alexan­der added: “They did not ask to be here. It is our job as par­ents, lead­ers, pro­fes­sion­als, busi­ness­men and women, to take care of them, pro­vide a safe world for them, es­tab­lish a no-non­sense ap­proach to crime and crim­i­nal be­hav­iour. It can be done and it must be done. We must save our na­tion.”