“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.