Sh­er­nice Thomas

What an East­er va­ca­tion it promis­es to be for more than 300 sec­ondary school stu­dents. These are the school lead­ers who have qual­i­fied for this year's At­lantic/Min­istry of Sport Lead­er­ship Sym­po­sium, which will be held on April 2–4, at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel Ball­room. More than 4,000 stu­dents from schools across the coun­try reg­is­tered to take part. Re­gret­tably, on­ly 300 have earned places in the men­tor­ship pro­gramme, which is host­ed by The T&T Guardian Sports Desk and is in­to its 13th edi­tion. This year's event is en­ti­tled See­ing Through the "I", and stu­dents will have a chance to ac­cess the val­ues of sport and life skills from sev­er­al of the coun­try's icons.

Over the years, the pro­gramme has been fa­cil­i­tat­ed by per­son­al­i­ties such as Bri­an Lara, George Bovell, Dar­ren Gan­ga, Meris­sa Aguil­liera, Ria Ram­nar­ine, Chris­t­ian Homer, Giselle La Ronde West, Je­hue Gor­don, Ken­nisha Thom-Selvon, Kurt Allen, Don La Fou­cade and sev­er­al oth­ers. Stu­dents have ac­cessed tips and a blue­print on how to suc­ceed in life from the speak­ers and have grabbed the chance to get au­to­graphs, pho­tographs and sim­ply touch their favourite per­son­al­i­ties. The event's founder, T&T Guardian Sports Ed­i­tor Valenti­no Singh said he was thrilled at the growth of the pro­gramme over the years.

"This re­al­ly start­ed as an idea with just about 40 stu­dents, main­ly from three or four schools in Port-of-Spain. To­day, schools from Ce­dros, Point Fortin, Pa­lo Seco, Guayagua­yare, Rio Claro and Ma­yaro as well as To­ba­go are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed. And al­though we are dis­ap­point­ed at not be­ing able to ac­com­mo­date every stu­dent who ap­plied, we have se­lect­ed those whom their prin­ci­pals be­lieve are fu­ture lead­ers. "We feel by ap­proach­ing the se­lec­tion this way, each school can ben­e­fit in the long run, since stu­dents will be able to re­turn to school and ar­tic­u­late what they ex­pe­ri­enced and learned to their fel­low school­mates." Singh paid trib­utes to Min­is­ter of Sport Anil Roberts and At­lantic, ti­tle spon­sors of the event.

"Min­is­ter Roberts has a great idea of the need for young peo­ple to be men­tored and has been a great sup­port­er of the event. Be­fore he be­came Min­is­ter, he was one of the fa­cil­i­ta­tors and the stu­dents loved him. "At­lantic has al­ways been a con­trib­u­tor but this year, they are much more in­volved. When we ap­proached them to be one of the ti­tle spon­sors, they nev­er hes­i­tat­ed and have thrown their full sup­port be­hind the pro­gramme." Sev­er­al oth­er con­trib­u­tors have as­sist­ed to make it pos­si­ble for stu­dents in rur­al ar­eas of the coun­try can ex­pe­ri­ence the event. These in­clude The Sports Com­pa­ny (SPORTT), TSTT Foun­da­tion, Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), Toy­ota, bpTT, and RBC. The of­fi­cial drink for the sym­po­sium is Red Bull, while prizes that will be hand­ed out on the fi­nal day are be­ing spon­sored by The Fan Club of Movi­eTowne, the li­censed store for sale of mer­chan­dise of the top foot­ball teams in the world, in­clud­ing Barcelona, Man­ches­ter Unit­ed, Ar­se­nal, Re­al Madrid, Ju­ven­tus and sev­er­al oth­er teams which cam­paign in the Cham­pi­ons League.