SHAS­TRI BOODAN

More than 400 young peo­ple spent part of their school va­ca­tion at Cadet Force Camp Costel­lo at the Cara­pichia­ma West Sec­ondary School. The camp opened on Ju­ly 14 and end­ed on Ju­ly 28. Pub­lic af­fairs of­fi­cer of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cadet Force (TTCF), cap­tain Ran­dal Roberts said the camp was named af­ter Ma­jor Bren­don Castel­lo and was un­der the com­mand of ma­jor Cowen Bain. The camp was used to cer­ti­fy cadets, who got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in a mock mil­i­tary tac­ti­cal ex­er­cise. "We had sup­port from the T&T De­fense Force in this ex­er­cise," Roberts said. The cadets al­so par­tic­i­pat­ed in a two-day sur­vival course and used Glob­al Po­si­tion­ing Sys­tems (GPS) to nav­i­gate. In ad­di­tion, they par­tic­i­pat­ed in jun­gle skills sur­vival and res­cue ex­er­cis­es, learned valu­able cook­ing skills from TTCF chef WI Shaz­ad Khan.

Khan staged an Iron-Chef styled com­pe­ti­tion, which was de­signed to en­sure that the young cooks could max­imise re­sources. Roberts said the TTCF start­ed its ex­pan­sion pro­gramme in 2008 and now has a pres­ence in 43 schools across T&T.He said not all cadets that come through the sys­tem have their eyes set on a mil­i­tary ca­reer. How­ev­er, they still ben­e­fit from the var­i­ous life skills from the mil­i­tary style train­ing. In ad­di­tion, the pos­i­tive ac­tiv­i­ties keep young­sters away from idle temp­ta­tions and in­still the dis­ci­pline they need to be con­sis­tent with their aca­d­e­m­ic work. "They are ex­pect­ed to be lead­ers in their school and are ex­pect­ed to make a dif­fer­ence."