Sport clubs mat­ter.

Grow­ing up in the 1960s and 1970s in Bel­mont, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go, in an era of Amer­i­can civ­il rights, the Black Pow­er rev­o­lu­tion, Nel­son Man­dela, Mal­colm X, Fi­del Cas­tro, Che Gue­var­ra, and Bob Mar­ley, sport had deep cul­tur­al and so­cial rel­e­vance and mean­ing. Sport clubs were im­por­tant and in­flu­en­tial in­sti­tu­tions.

How­ev­er, T&T was a so­cial space where po­ten­tial and tal­ent didn't mat­ter as much as "where you were from" and "who you were". You had to find a way to over­come so­cial and class stig­ma. Fail­ure wasn't an op­tion. It was im­por­tant "to not for­get" the truth and re­al­i­ty. To not be fooled. What mat­tered wasn't how far you reached in life or how much mon­ey you made, what was in­stilled was the im­por­tance of "giv­ing a help­ing hand"; "Each one, help one".

Here we are in T&T in the year 2025. While on the sur­face there are many changes and im­prove­ments, bil­lions of oil mon­ey have passed through the trea­sury. The struc­ture of T&T so­ci­ety re­mains un­changed. Too many who were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate change and make a dif­fer­ence were more fo­cused on el­e­vat­ing their own sta­tus and that of their in­ner cir­cle. In so do­ing, they be­came op­pres­sors—the very same be­ing they hat­ed.

Dur­ing the Car­ni­val sea­son, the song that made a whole lot of sense was Yung Bred­da's "We Rise". He sung – "What are you do­ing" to ef­fect that change.

As we rise up every morn

We fly through de skies like rain

Our peo­ple will rise again

Hand in hand is how we’ll start

Every­one can play their part.

Yung Bred­da, Sea Lots-born-and-bred, rep­re­sent­ed the com­mu­ni­ty with pride and dig­ni­ty.

"We Rise. "

It's a fact of Trin­bag­on­ian life that in­equal­i­ty and in­jus­tices pre­vail. No mat­ter the pow­er that sport has to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence, the so­cial and class struc­tures that go back to the 60s and 70s and be­fore that pe­ri­od of time are still unas­sail­able. The sur­face rules not sub­stance.

Every day is a be­gin­ning - a start over. The anger and frus­tra­tion is per­va­sive.

It's as if lit­tle or no progress has been made. Or what­ev­er progress has been made is eas­i­ly erased. Sta­tus mat­ters not mean­ing­ful and sus­tain­able change or progress.

Nonethe­less, the fight must go on. One life saved mat­ters. And in that re­gard sport mat­ters. The fight is re­al.

As we rise up every morn­ing, every­one can play their part.

Grass­roots equate to com­mu­ni­ty. We need to re­build sport clubs. We need to fig­ure out how, notwith­stand­ing the eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, to reignite, re­vi­talise, re­vamp and re­birth sport clubs.

With­out a strong club ecosys­tem, the grass­roots ad­mit­ted­ly will strug­gle. In re­cent years, I have heard a myr­i­ad of rea­sons for the demise of clubs and might I add vol­un­teerism. How­ev­er, vol­un­teerism is an in­te­gral el­e­ment of a sus­tain­able sport club ecosys­tem.

There is a view that vol­un­teerism as it used to be is a "thing" of a past era. Gone nev­er to re­turn.

If that is so, then we are in an even dark­er place. But hope springs eter­nal. I be­lieve there is an army of mod­ern-day vol­un­teers await­ing mo­ti­va­tion, in­spi­ra­tion and guid­ance. Sport mat­ters; Com­mu­ni­ty mat­ters; Sport clubs mat­ter. We need vi­brant sport clubs thriv­ing through­out T&T com­mu­ni­ties.

We Rise!

Ed­i­tor’s note

The vei­ws ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.