Yes­ter­day was the ob­ser­vance of the Unit­ed Na­tions “In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the African Child” com­mem­o­rat­ed an­nu­al­ly on June 16. The day is in ho­n­our of those young peo­ple who strug­gled and lost their lives in the 1976 Sowe­to Up­ris­ing in South Africa. The stu­dents were protest­ing for bet­ter ed­u­ca­tion for black chil­dren. The day com­mem­o­rates the killing of African school­child­ren in Sowe­to by the Apartheid gov­ern­ment.

The day for most in the Caribbean—in­clud­ing T&T—wasn’t the top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion or con­sid­er­a­tion. Be­ing black-con­scious gen­er­ates an un­com­fort­able­ness and un­ease. This fear ul­ti­mate­ly leads to a dis­dain for truth, and ad­mit­ting the lived truth of the black ex­pe­ri­ence.

In the books Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon’s per­spec­tive of racism and his analy­sis of Eu­ro­pean colo­nial rule is rel­e­vant to mod­ern-day re­al­i­ties and an un­der­stand­ing of his­tor­i­cal an­tecedents, trau­mas and caus­es. One has to un­der­stand the root of, a or any, prob­lem so as to cre­ate so­lu­tion op­tions.

In ad­dress­ing the prob­lems fac­ing youth and young peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar (but not lim­it­ed to) ur­ban out-of-school youth in com­mu­ni­ties (mis) la­belled “at risk”, what are the avail­able tools?

How do we em­pow­er young peo­ple to trans­form their lives and their com­mu­ni­ties, through the use of sport and the val­ues of sport?

How can sport in the Caribbean con­tribute to the Unit­ed Na­tions Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals (SDGs), with a par­tic­u­lar fo­cus on youth?

Yes­ter­day, my mus­ings and re­flec­tion dur­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the African Child, took place against the back­ground of the 2025 World Ju­do Cham­pi­onships—the 38th edi­tion of the men’s and 29th edi­tion of the women’s—tak­ing place at the Lás­zló Papp Sports Are­na in Bu­dapest, Hun­gary, from June 13-20 as part of the In­ter­na­tion­al Ju­do Fed­er­a­tion (IJF) World Tour.

I was in­vit­ed by the pres­i­dent of the IJF Mar­ius Viz­er. Pres­i­dent Viz­er be­lieves and has open­ly stat­ed his view that “sports lead­ers should live for sports, not from sports”. And that those who lead in the sports world should be ded­i­cat­ed to the ad­vance­ment and in­tegri­ty of sports.

He was first elect­ed IJF pres­i­dent in 2007, and was re-elect­ed un­op­posed for a sixth term at the re­cent IJF elec­tive Con­gress held in Bu­dapest last Wednes­day (June 11). He has trans­formed In­ter­na­tion­al Ju­do-at­tract­ing new fans and spon­sors and giv­ing more op­por­tu­ni­ties to ath­letes. Un­der his lead­er­ship, the In­ter­na­tion­al Ju­do Fed­er­a­tion is one of the most ac­tive In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tions (IFs) in so­cial pro­grammes, from grass­roots to elite sports, that are mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in sev­er­al IJF mem­ber coun­tries. Three that have the po­ten­tial in T&T and oth­er Caribbean Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) mem­ber coun­tries are “Ju­do for Peace, Ju­do for Chil­dren and Ju­do in Schools”.

School and youth-on-youth vi­o­lence is a re­flec­tion of the re­al­i­ty of T&T and where our coun­try is at right now. T&T needs a re­set and it has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do so fol­low­ing a change of gov­ern­ment on April 28, 2025.

While here in Bu­dapest I al­so had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet with In­ter­na­tion­al Weightlift­ing Fed­er­a­tion (IWF) and In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Teqball (FITEQ) lead­ers. The con­ver­sa­tions weren’t on­ly about medals and cham­pi­onships but shar­ing ideas on the so­cial con­tri­bu­tion sport and sport diplo­ma­cy can make in curb­ing schools and youth-on-youth vi­o­lence in small is­land states in the Caribbean.