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Friday, May 2, 2025

Who is your son’s hero?

by

BRIAN LEWIS
725 days ago
20230509
Brian Lewis Things That Matter Logo NEW

Brian Lewis Things That Matter Logo NEW

“When every­one’s mind is dulled or dis­tract­ed, the leader must be dou­bly vig­i­lant.”

--Col­in Pow­ell

De­tails dic­tate di­rec­tion.

An­ti-es­tab­lish­ment sen­ti­ment de­fines most young men grow­ing up in work­ing-class, mar­gin­alised, low-in­come and poor com­mu­ni­ties all over the world not on­ly in T&T and the Caribbean.

There were al­ways com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers/el­ders who young men looked up to. Dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances dic­tate align­ment and af­fil­i­a­tions.

While the pos­i­tive im­pact and in­flu­ence of moth­ers and women who form the ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly or “vil­lage” that rais­es a child are un­ques­tioned.

It is a male fig­ure that young men yearn for.

I re­call grow­ing up in Bel­mont with­out the re­al­i­ty of a fa­ther. The ab­sence of his pres­ence, voice, and in­flu­ence left a void that the best ef­forts of a moth­er couldn’t fill. No mat­ter how much my moth­er did- and she was su­per­hu­man, un­con­di­tion­al and im­mense in her en­deav­our, love and en­er­gy - there was that void.

Who or what fills that void? It’s oth­er male fig­ures or ac­tiv­i­ties con­sid­ered man­ly. At times it seems as if every ef­fort to get an un­der­stand­ing and ac­cep­tance of the pow­er of our mu­sic, cul­ture and sport to make that dif­fer­ence in the lives of youth and young peo­ple falls on deaf ears and in­fer­tile ground. It’s not about to­kenism.

How­ev­er, I have come to re­alise that it’s not that peo­ple don’t get it or hear it. They do. They hear what you are say­ing in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly. But the truth is it isn’t res­onat­ing emo­tion­al­ly. It hits their mind and brain but not the heart.

There is an echo of soul­less­ness that boomerangs back. It doesn’t res­onate emo­tion­al­ly. For many sports is a soul­less van­i­ty project. Over the years, this col­umn has de­vot­ed time and space to ad­vo­cat­ing and cham­pi­oning the role sport can play in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. In all the doom and gloom- there is hope and bet­ter­ment.

Last Thurs­day, I par­tic­i­pat­ed as one of the men­tors in the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment MPow­erTT- MZONE dis­cus­sions for young men be­tween 16-40 years old. This par­tic­u­lar ses­sion one of a num­ber across T&T was held in Princes Town. It was well at­tend­ed and the at­ten­dees were very frank, hon­est and in­ter­ac­tive.

The Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe must be com­mend­ed for her de­ter­mi­na­tion to en­sure the MPow­erTT- MZONE ini­tia­tive saw the light of day.

It’s an im­por­tant heart-to-heart con­ver­sa­tion of learn­ing, shar­ing and grow­ing. It’s about shar­ing a mes­sage of hope. The theme of the project is to em­pow­er, em­brace, ed­u­cate, and el­e­vate. The in­ten­tion is to pro­vide a plat­form to ad­dress is­sues that are rel­e­vant and im­pact­ful to our na­tion’s boys and men. A num­ber of the Princes Town at­ten­dees ex­pressed a de­sire to be giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ties in mu­sic or sport to break the eco­nom­ic bar­ri­er.

They iden­ti­fied those two as­pects as their pas­sion. Re­gard­less of how trou­bled or at risk they may be per­ceived by so­ci­ety at large. They yearn for op­por­tu­ni­ties to fol­low and ex­press their pas­sion.

Rich or poor, delin­quent or re­cal­ci­trant-every­body wants to ex­pe­ri­ence a bet­ter life in some way or an­oth­er. It’s an emo­tion­al des­ti­na­tion we all would like to head to­ward.

The de­sire for mean­ing, iden­ti­ty, to be seen, heard and un­der­stood.

At this point, it may seem that we are los­ing the bat­tle but I am con­fi­dent notwith­stand­ing how it looks like right now we will even­tu­al­ly win the war on youth crime and gun vi­o­lence. The courage of thought. Let’s keep our minds fo­cused and not be dis­tract­ed by the dai­ly cri­sis.

The core mis­sion is con­stant. A brighter, bet­ter and sus­tain­able T&T, Caribbean and World.


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