David E Bratt MD

"What's wrong with our chil­dren? Adults telling chil­dren to be hon­est while ly­ing and cheat­ing. Adults telling chil­dren to not be vi­o­lent while mar­ket­ing and glo­ri­fy­ing war and vi­o­lence...I be­lieve that adult hypocrisy is the biggest prob­lem chil­dren face in Amer­i­ca..." –Mar­i­an Wright Edle­man

Mar­i­an Wright Edel­man (dob 1939) is a pret­ty im­pres­sive woman al­though most Tri­nis will not know any­thing about her. She is not a mil­i­tary per­son. She does not play foot­ball or bas­ket­ball. Nor does she at­tend Hol­ly­wood red car­pet events.

She was the first African Amer­i­can woman ad­mit­ted to the Mis­sis­sip­pi Bar af­ter grad­u­at­ing from Yale Law School in 1963. In 1973, she found­ed the Chil­dren's De­fense Fund, an ad­vo­ca­cy and re­search cen­tre for is­sues af­fect­ing poor, mi­nor­i­ty and dis­abled Amer­i­can chil­dren.

She is the re­cip­i­ent of the 2000 Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom, the high­est civil­ian award in the Unit­ed States.The Web site of the Min­istry of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment (mgy­cd.gov.tt) is an in­ter­est­ing place. It's nice­ly de­signed and has pret­ty colours. It's easy to surf and all seems fine un­til you ac­tu­al­ly try to find out what the min­istry is about and what it does. Then you sink in­to a morass of star­tling af­fir­ma­tions, poor Eng­lish, and con­fused sen­tences mas­querad­ing as "Mis­sion State­ments," "Pur­pose" and "Vi­sion." A favourite word seems to be "holis­tic." Any­time you hear some­one say­ing "holis­tic," run! A more over-used ad­jec­tive, de­void of re­al sig­nif­i­cance, there nev­er was.

It says its "Main Pur­pose" is "to lead, fa­cil­i­tate, sup­port and mon­i­tor the ad­vance­ment of gen­der equal­i­ty and the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren and young peo­ple. This will be achieved by spear­head­ing rights-based poli­cies and pro­grammes, ser­vice de­liv­ery and in­for­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the stake­hold­ers."Not bad. If it was be­ing done.Its "Mis­sion" is "to pro­vide ef­fec­tive lead­er­ship on is­sues­de­vel­op­ment, re­lat­ed to gen­der and de­vel­op­ment and ef­fec­tive child and youth ev­i­dence based pol­i­cy mak­ing and im­ple­men­ta­tion of qual­i­ty ser­vices (868) by en­sur­ing and pro­grammes, plan­ning; mon­i­tor­ing; and eval­u­a­tion and stake­hold­er col­lab­o­ra­tion." "Is­sues­d­vel­op­ment" is writ­ten ex­act­ly like that and in the con­text of the para­graph must con­sti­tute a new word be­cause the rest of the word­ing is equal­ly im­pen­e­tra­ble to the ra­tio­nal mind.

Af­ter that dis­mal­ly con­struct­ed mis­sion state­ment, I re­fused to spend much time on the vi­sion state­ment, which is full of high­fa­lut­ing phras­es such as:"en­abling en­vi­ron­ment...high qual­i­ty, peo­ple cen­tred ser­vices...stan­dards of ex­cel­lence" etc etc, all of which have lit­tle to do with what is hap­pen­ing in our streets.Their "Ser­vices" seem to be di­vid­ed in­to Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vice, Gen­der De­vel­op­ment, Youth De­vel­op­ment and Child De­vel­op­ment. I will leave the first two to the Net­work of NGOs for the Ad­vance­ment of Women for com­ment. Or, you can read what Hazel Brown has to say about the Gen­der Pol­i­cy in last Sat­ur­day's Guardian.

The "Youth De­vel­op­ment Ser­vice" says they are "Pro­mot­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of young peo­ple in de­ci­sion-mak­ing and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­grammes and poli­cies." Nah! The most they seem to do is to host va­ca­tion camps. There is al­so a vol­un­teer pro­gramme which, af­ter the usu­al pi­ous de­c­la­ra­tions of in­tent, takes up the rest of the page. Each time you click on the four love­ly pic­tures at the bot­tom, the in­for­ma­tion about this vol­un­teer pro­gramme is re­peat­ed.The "Child De­vel­op­ment Ser­vice" is said to "en­cour­age in our chil­dren a strong self-im­age based on a deep pro­found un­der­stand­ing of self." This one comes com­plete with the pic­tures of three Cau­casian youths in their late teens or ear­ly 20s. Check it out!

The im­ages are quite star­tling in view of the "self-im­age" phi­los­o­phy, "based on a deep pro­found un­der­stand­ing of self," and wor­thy of psy­cho­log­i­cal opin­ion. The fact that the "Ser­vice" is about "Child De­vel­op­ment" yet shows young adults, demon­strates a com­plete lack of un­der­stand­ing about what a child is and about child de­vel­op­ment.

The on­ly oth­er ref­er­ence to "Child De­vel­op­ment" re­lates to some­thing called the "In­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary Child De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre" (ICDC) in Cou­va. This is de­scribed as "a gov­ern­ment-fund­ed pre-school fa­cil­i­ty that serves the un­der­priv­i­leged...The func­tion of the Cen­tre is to pro­vide ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion, nu­tri­tion and stim­u­la­tion." In oth­er words, it's a day care cen­tre. Not that you would ap­pre­ci­ate that af­ter read­ing the fan­cy-sound­ing name: In­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary Child De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre!

At last, un­der the Child De­vel­op­ment sub-head­ing "Pro­tec­tion Rights," you can find a spe­cif­ic ob­jec­tive: "to pro­tect the child from dis­crim­i­na­tion, all forms of abuse, vi­o­lence, ex­ploita­tion, sub­stance abuse, in­jus­tice and con­flict."This comes com­plete with the star­tling state­ment that: "Abused chil­dren are be­ing res­cued by au­thor­i­ties reg­u­lar­ly and mea­sures have been put in place to cov­er more ground."Every­one and their nen­nen who are in­volved in try­ing to help abused chil­dren or any­one who reads the pa­pers reg­u­lar­ly know that this is non­sense.Af­ter the ex­pos­es we heard at the re­cent Vi­o­lence Against Chil­dren Con­fer­ence, and the scan­dalous lack of fund­ing for the Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty, it would seem that this min­istry needs to take a clos­er look at the words of Mrs Wright Edle­man. If you are not part of the so­lu­tion, you are part of the prob­lem.