Ac­tion speaks loud­er than words. Now is the time for Cari­com lead­ers to take ur­gent and de­ci­sive ac­tion – Sport Mat­ters.

The Sport­ing Ser­vices sub-sec­tor will play a vi­tal role in ad­dress­ing the crime chal­lenge of vi­o­lence as a pub­lic health is­sue.

I at­tend­ed the 83rd spe­cial meet­ing of the Cari­com Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (COT­ED) - Ser­vices, which took place on Jan­u­ary 31, 2020, pre­ced­ed by a Prepara­to­ry Meet­ing of Of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing sec­tor spe­cial­ists and ex­perts from acad­e­mia, from Jan­u­ary 27-28, 2020. Meet­ings were held at the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at's Head­quar­ters, Turkeyen, George­town, Guyana.

To cre­ate and op­er­a­tionalise a sin­gle space for Ser­vices un­der the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME), Cari­com Mem­ber States had agreed to pre­pare a re­gion­al strate­gic and im­ple­men­ta­tion plan for Ser­vices, with fund­ing sup­port from the Eu­ro­pean Union un­der the 10th Eu­ro­pean De­vel­op­ment Fund (EDF).

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od 2017-2020, more than 20 meet­ings were held to pre­pare Strate­gies and Im­ple­men­ta­tion Plans for sev­en sub-sec­tors that were giv­en pri­or­i­ty: Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices; ICT Ser­vices; Pro­fes­sion­al Ser­vices; Cul­tur­al, En­ter­tain­ment and Sport­ing Ser­vices; Health and Well­ness Ser­vices; Ed­u­ca­tion Ser­vices; and Tourism Ser­vices.

The main ob­jec­tives of the 83rd spe­cial meet­ing of the COT­ED Ser­vices were to: (i) ex­am­ine in de­tail, the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Re­gion­al Ser­vices Project Steer­ing Com­mit­tee (RSP­SC), in par­tic­u­lar, the Draft Strate­gies and Im­ple­men­ta­tion Plans, and the Mas­ter Strat­e­gy and Im­ple­men­ta­tion Plans; and (ii) amend, as deemed nec­es­sary, and en­dorse the rec­om­men­da­tions for on­ward trans­mis­sion to the Lead Head of Gov­ern­ment with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Ser­vices in the Cari­com Qua­si Cab­i­net. It was a com­pre­hen­sive and de­tailed ef­fort by the RSP­SC and Tim­o­thy Odle, Deputy Pro­gramme Man­ag­er for Ser­vices at the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at.

At that time as the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) pres­i­dent and the Sport­ing Ser­vices sec­tor spe­cial­ist, I as­sert­ed the im­por­tance of Sport­ing Ser­vices in ad­dress­ing the dele­te­ri­ous ef­fects of youth un­em­ploy­ment in Cari­com Mem­ber States.

Read­ing for my Ex­ec­u­tive Mas­ters De­gree in Sport Man­age­ment The­sis on Gov­er­nance in Trinidad and To­ba­go Sport, the lit­er­a­ture re­view was in­flu­en­tial and in­struc­tive, in par­tic­u­lar, pa­pers writ­ten by Dr Roy Mc­gree, so­ci­ol­o­gist and Se­nior Fel­low at SALIS­ES (the Sir Arthur Lewis In­sti­tute of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic Stud­ies) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine. His sem­i­nal pa­per on the gen­er­al ex­clu­sion of sport from of­fi­cial and dom­i­nant no­tions of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and trans­for­ma­tion in the Cari­com an­swers the ques­tion, of why the process of mov­ing to the im­ple­men­ta­tion phase of the ser­vices sec­tor strate­gic and im­ple­men­ta­tion plan is "pedan­tic".

Frank and hon­est con­ver­sa­tions about the caus­es of the crime chal­lenge, is a crit­i­cal suc­cess fac­tor.

At the Hy­att Re­gency (T&T), a Cari­com Re­gion­al Sym­po­sium on "Vi­o­lence as a Pub­lic Health Is­sue- the Crime Chal­lenge" host­ed by Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Dr. the Hon Dr Kei­th Row­ley at­tend­ing are Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment and re­gion­al ex­perts, are tak­ing place. The two-day event start­ed yes­ter­day (Mon­day) and con­tin­ues to­day (Tues­day). It is im­por­tant that the Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ments pri­ori­tise the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Cari­com Ser­vices Sec­tor De­vel­op­ment strate­gic plan.

Dr Mc­gree posits that for sport to be­come an in­te­gral part of the Caribbean econ­o­my: "the Colo­nial de­rived, re­ceived and or­tho­dox view of of the his­tor­i­cal roles as­signed to sport must shift to new con­cep­tions of sport, the ath­lete and the econ­o­my on the part of Caribbean states, the busi­ness sec­tor and Caribbean peo­ples on the whole."

The con­tin­ued ex­clu­sion of sport from of­fi­cial and dom­i­nant no­tions of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment and trans­for­ma­tion in the Cari­com con­tributes to youth un­em­ploy­ment and a de­pen­den­cy syn­drome, which is to the detri­ment of the youth and young peo­ple in the Cari­com Mem­ber states.

An­oth­er must-at­tend is the 50th An­niver­sary Con­fer­ence of the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion of 1970. It is a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) and SALIS­ES. This con­fer­ence is this Thurs­day and Fri­day, from 8 am both days at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um, UWI, St Au­gus­tine.