The pos­i­tive faces of Beetham Gar­dens cap­tured the spot­light on April 30 as res­i­dents of the Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ty spoke glow­ing­ly of the im­pact of a se­ries of so­cial in­ter­ven­tions ini­ti­at­ed by The Rose Foun­da­tion and sup­port­ed by en­er­gy com­pa­ny BP T&T.

The oc­ca­sion was a vis­it to Beetham Gar­dens (Phase Two) by Carl-Hen­ric Svan­berg, chair­man, BP Group plc, who was giv­en an out­line of the so­cial in­vest­ment pro­grammes aimed pri­mar­i­ly at sup­press­ing crime and em­pow­er­ing the res­i­dents.

Rep­re­sent­ing bpTT were Nor­man Christie, re­gion­al pres­i­dent; Giselle Thomp­son, vice pres­i­dent�cor­po­rate op­er­a­tions; Ron­da Fran­cis, man­ag­er�cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, and oth­er se­nior man­age­ment per­son­nel. The func­tion took place at the Each One Teach One Preschool, a re­lease from BP said.

The BP Group chair­man took time from a heavy sched­ule in a two-day vis­it to T&T to in­ter­act with the res­i­dents of Beetham Gar­dens and get di­rect feed­back of the ben­e­fits of var­i­ous projects in Beetham and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties.

"I have vis­it­ed our fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad but this is the best part of my vis­it. I am ex­treme­ly proud that we all sup­port this pro­gramme. Even if we pro­vide the mon­ey, that in it­self wouldn't make a dif­fer­ence. It is what you do with it. The re­al dif­fer­ence is the im­pact you make on the lives of the peo­ple.

"If we car­ry out more of these projects in T&T and oth­er parts of the world, the world would be a dif­fer­ent place," Svan­berg told the res­i­dents.

Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Win­ston Pe­ters, con­grat­u­lat­ed bpTT for part­ner­ing with the of­ten-ma­ligned Beetham com­mu­ni­ty to bring about pos­i­tive change in their lives, adding that he had first-hand knowl­edge of the com­pa­ny's nu­mer­ous so­cial in­vest­ment pro­grammes in Ma­yaro, where he serves as MP. The Min­is­ter vir­tu­al­ly stole the show in the for­mal part of the func­tion when he sang vers­es from three of his ca­lyp­soes, in­clud­ing Lit­tle Black Boy, end­ing with an ex­tem­pore verse and earn­ing re­sound­ing ap­plause from the au­di­ence.

April 30 will rep­re­sent a bench­mark in the his­to­ry of Beetham Gar­dens, as the BP Group chair­man buried a time cap­sule con­tain­ing copies of fu­ture de­vel­op­ment plans and ini­tia­tives, a book­let ti­tled Faces of Beetham, bpTT's As­pi­ra­tions and an in­fo-graph­ic de­tail­ing the com­pa­ny's lo­cal im­pact.

Svan­berg al­so un­veiled a Wall of Fame in­scribed with the names of no­table vis­i­tors to the com­mu­ni­ty. They are the last British Gov­er­nor of T&T, Sir Ed­ward Betham Beetham, af­ter whom the com­mu­ni­ty is named; His Roy­al High­ness Prince Charles; for­mer chief jus­tice Michael de la Bastide; for­mer pres­i­dent of T&T, Prof George Maxwell Richards; British High Com­mis­sion­er Arthur Snell; and BP Group chair­man Carl-Hen­ric Svan­berg him­self.

The time cap­sule will be opened af­ter ten years.

Ear­li­er, Beetham res­i­dent Michael Ma­son told the au­di­ence, the com­mu­ni­ty "wants you to lis­ten to what we want. Don't come and dic­tate to us. We have lov­ing peo­ple here. We have tal­ent to burn and we wel­come this op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with you. We have al­ready seen first-hand how these pro­grammes can ben­e­fit us. We need your sup­port to up­lift this com­mu­ni­ty."

Con­sta­ble Den­wayne Nep­tune, a mem­ber of the In­ter Agency Task Force (IATF) of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice, out­lined graph­ic ex­am­ples of the pos­i­tive work ac­com­plished by the agency in col­lab­o­ra­tion with The Rose Foun­da­tion in high-risk crime ar­eas.

"The in­ter­ven­tions of the foun­da­tion have re­sult­ed in sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tions of vi­o­lent crimes in these com­mu­ni­ties. Young men who used to car­ry out vi­o­lent gun crimes are now part of a class­room where they are learn­ing and im­prov­ing them­selves. This is our man­date," said PC Nep­tune.

Found­ed by Ster­ling Bel­grove, The Rose Foun­da­tion is a civ­il so­ci­ety so­cial de­vel­op­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion.

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