The theme for this year’s Unit­ed Way Trinidad and To­ba­go Day of Car­ing last Sun­day was “Show Your Care Every­where”. That’s ex­act­ly what the Pub­lic De­fend­ers De­part­ment of the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty did when they se­lect­ed a place to beau­ti­fy and up­lift this year, their sec­ond year par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ini­tia­tive.

The pub­lic de­fend­ers chose the La Hor­quet­ta South Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School be­cause of its lo­ca­tion and its links to some of the mem­bers.

The group spent all of Sun­day em­bell­ish­ing the space with plants as well as paint­ing a mur­al on the wall and games on the quad­ran­gle.

Chief Pub­lic De­fend­er Ha­sine Shaikh said, “Where the av­er­age age of the of­fend­er be­fore the court is gen­er­al­ly un­der the age of 25 years old, the need for ear­ly in­ter­ven­tion is key.”

She said youth proac­tive­ly re­quired in­vest­ment in­to their de­vel­op­ment and that start­ed from the pri­ma­ry school lev­el.

Vol­un­teer Giselle Buck­mire, who is al­so the par­ent of a for­mer pupil, said there was ex­cite­ment in the school on Mon­day when the pupils saw the changes that were done. She told Guardian Me­dia that it brought life, some­thing new and dif­fer­ent to the en­vi­ron­ment.

“The colour brings a peace­ful spir­it in­to the school. It’s new and dif­fer­ent,” she said.

She be­lieves reach­ing out to pri­ma­ry school stu­dents now, could re­duce the num­ber of youths be­ing ar­rest­ed in the fu­ture.

The par­ent said yes­ter­day the Stan­dard Five boys were wa­ter­ing the plants with­out be­ing in­struct­ed to do so.

The Unit­ed Way Trinidad and To­ba­go Day of Car­ing is a vol­un­teer em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment event where cor­po­rate part­ners en­gage with their em­ploy­ees to give their time and en­er­gy to their cho­sen projects. These in­clude im­prov­ing schools and NGO build­ings, beach clean-ups, and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach like grow­ing gar­dens to de­liv­er­ing care pack­ages for el­der­ly homes.

The Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment was cre­at­ed in March 2020 un­der the Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty de­signed specif­i­cal­ly to han­dle Crim­i­nal As­sizes mat­ters. The de­part­ment aims to en­sure that peo­ple who are of small to mod­er­ate means and who would oth­er­wise be un­rep­re­sent­ed have qual­i­ty and ef­fi­cient le­gal rep­re­sen­ta­tion.