Many of the head­lines for the year so far may have told the sto­ries of young peo­ple fac­ing the con­se­quences of choos­ing a neg­a­tive path.

How­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings be­lieves this nar­ra­tive is one-sided and not the full truth of the sit­u­a­tion, as many youths are choos­ing paths of pos­i­tiv­i­ty and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“We want to move some of those young peo­ple who would usu­al­ly be trans­port­ed in that fan­cy ve­hi­cle with po­lice guard shoot­ing down the high­way from that re­al­i­ty to a re­al­i­ty where they be­come pro­duc­tive cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Cum­mings said yes­ter­day.

It’s why he’s en­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to nom­i­nate young peo­ple who are de­serv­ing of recog­ni­tion in var­i­ous fields for the Na­tion­al Youth Awards 2022.

“With­in your com­mu­ni­ty, you must know who are the young peo­ple who stand out,” he said.

At the launch of the 26th edi­tion of awards at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, Cum­mings said there are a lot of young peo­ple full of po­ten­tial in this coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the arts. This year’s awards cer­e­mo­ny will be held on Sep­tem­ber 25.

He said this will be a medi­um to cel­e­brate their achieve­ments.

Nom­i­na­tions for the awards opened at mid­night last night and can be made on the min­istry’s web­site https://mydns.gov.tt/.

There are 18 cat­e­gories in the fields of agri­cul­ture, en­vi­ron­ment, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, arts and cul­ture, acad­e­mia, health and well­ness and tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al skills to name a few.

How­ev­er, Cum­mings called on all stake­hold­ers to play their role in trans­form­ing the youth, es­pe­cial­ly the pri­vate sec­tor, who he en­cour­aged to part­ner with the Gov­ern­ment.

He said they will go in­to schools and as­sist those strug­gling to meet their fullest po­ten­tial and chan­nel grad­u­ates in­to ar­eas of en­tre­pre­neur­ship and job cre­ation.

This was a mes­sage 18-year-old Ro­nia Sawn did not have to hear twice.

Swan won four awards last year for Youth Ac­tivism/Ser­vice, Pos­i­tive Youth Mes­sage Thor­ough Film, Pos­i­tive Youth De­vel­op­ment In­flu­encer, and Ed­u­ca­tion.

“The Na­tion­al Youth Awards in­spire young peo­ple to keep mak­ing a dif­fer­ence or to start,” she said.

The young la­dy, who was raised by a sin­gle moth­er, said her ac­com­plish­ments so far were no walk in the park but she tried her best.

It’s why her main goal is to up­lift oth­ers and help steer them in the right di­rec­tion.

“We can take one abused per­son off the streets, one mur­der­er off the hook and one weapon off the mar­ket,” Swan said.

She said when she won the four awards, she pledged to her­self and T&T that any­thing she does will be to ben­e­fit this coun­try.