Carisa Lee

Re­porter

Carisa.Lee@cnc3.co.tt

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher wants young peo­ple to know they are not alone and there are peo­ple ready to as­sist them through their ups and downs, in­clud­ing their chal­lenges in life.

“There are peo­ple who care about you, who want to see you thrive, and who are ready to help you nav­i­gate the chal­lenges you face,” said Hare­wood-Christo­pher.

She made the com­ment dur­ing the launch of the Build­ing Re­silient Youth Against Gangs Pro­gramme im­ple­ment­ed by the Oral Tra­di­tion Roots Foun­da­tion and the Bev­er­ley Hill/Block 8 Po­lice Youth Club at the St Paul Street Mul­ti­pur­pose Com­plex, Port-of-Spain, last week. The pro­gramme is fund­ed by the US Em­bassy. Hare­wood-Christo­pher en­cour­aged the youths in the au­di­ence to seek peo­ple who in­spire them, chal­lenge them to do bet­ter, and walk with them on their jour­ney.

Oral Tra­di­tion Roots Foun­da­tion founder and ac­tivist Mti­ma Sol­wazi said this is why it was so im­por­tant for the launch to be host­ed at St Paul Street.

“That will leave a last­ing im­pres­sion on these chil­dren,” he said.

Sol­wazi said the pres­ence of US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond would leave a pos­i­tive im­pres­sion on the chil­dren who hail from un­der­priv­i­leged com­mu­ni­ties.

“These com­mu­ni­ties are in­vis­i­ble com­mu­ni­ties. We pass by these com­mu­ni­ties with we head left and right, de­pend­ing on what side the com­mu­ni­ty is lo­cat­ed on,” Sol­wazi said.

Dur­ing his speech, Sol­wazi in­vit­ed Neal Nicholas, who helped with the prepa­ra­tion for the launch, on stage to em­brace Am­bas­sador Bond.

“Neal might not un­der­stand what re­al­ly hap­pen­ing here boy, and I giv­ing you the head­line for to­mor­row, Can­dace Bond with Neal,” he stat­ed.

The Build­ing Re­silient Youth Against Gangs Pro­gramme will of­fi­cial­ly be­gin in Jan­u­ary and end in Sep­tem­ber 2025. Sol­wazi ex­plained that they were not try­ing to rein­vent the wheel but merge the dif­fer­ent pro­grammes done by the youth clubs and the Roots Foun­da­tion to pro­vide a holis­tic ex­pe­ri­ence for the youths.

“The po­lice youth clubs, they do sports, they do cul­ture in terms of the steel­pan, and Roots Foun­da­tion do spo­ken word po­et­ry and to­geth­er we com­bine it with some men­tor­ship, life skills, we want to ad­dress is­sues of trau­ma,” he said.

The ac­tivist said the pro­gramme would take place in oth­er youth clubs such as Block 8 and Beetham, com­mu­ni­ties that have built up ten­sion amongst them.

“St Paul Street and Beetham have a lot of is­sues and for us to be here is tes­ta­ment to the work of the po­lice youth club, where they could bridge that gap and bring youth from the dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties in one space ... and we hope to repli­cate that,” Sol­wazi said.

The ac­tivist said the same way crime is spread­ing, they need to spread pos­i­tiv­i­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion.

The Beetham Vi­bra­tions pro­vid­ed the en­train­ment at the event.