A num­ber of na­tion­al ath­letes, com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions and na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions were on Thurs­day the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment's on­go­ing sup­port ini­tia­tive to the tune of $900,000.

Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe who is re­spon­si­ble for the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment was on hand to dis­trib­ute Elite Ath­letes As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAAP) fund­ing to six top ath­letes, in­clud­ing cy­clist Ak­ile Camp­bell and track and field ath­letes shut put­ter Por­tious War­ren, long jumper And­wuelle Wright, hur­dler Rue­bin Wal­ters and sprint sib­lings Jonathan and Nathan Far­in­ha ahead of prepa­ra­tion for the 2024 Olympic Games in France as oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al meets.

On­ly at the week­end, Wal­ters fin­ished sev­enth in the 60-me­tre hur­dles fi­nal of the New Bal­ance In­door Meet in the Unit­ed States. At that meet an­oth­er T&T sprint ace Jereem 'The Dream' Richards sealed the gold medal at the 400 me­tres men's fi­nals.

Cud­joe and her team al­so dis­trib­uted grant fund­ing to the Na­tion­al Sport­ing Or­ga­ni­za­tions and Sport Serv­ing Bod­ies such as Zenith Ath­let­ic Club, WI Sports Ltd and TT Game­plan, as well as oth­er Com­mu­ni­ty Groups/Ser­vice Or­gan­i­sa­tions/Faith Based Or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clu­sive of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Fe­male Ex­ec­u­tives of T&T (AFETT), Car­val­ho Pro­duc­tions, Col­lege Ma­nia T.V. Ltd, David and Friends, Down Syn­drome Fam­i­ly Net­work, Let Our Vi­sion Evolve, Ser­vol Spe­cial School, the Coun­cil for the De­vel­op­ment and En­hance­ment of the Fam­i­ly (CODE-F) and the School of St. Fran­cis Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Church.

The dis­tri­b­u­tion comes on the heels of an­oth­er dis­burse­ment of $1.6 mil­lion to the T&T hock­ey teams that par­tic­i­pat­ed at the just con­clud­ed 2022 Se­nior Pan Amer­i­can Cup in San­ti­a­go, Chile.