Derek Achong

For­mer US Sec­re­tary of State Gen­er­al Col­in Pow­ell (re­tired) says he is im­pressed by Gov­ern­ment's ef­forts to make the Na­tion­al Men­tor­ing Pro­gramme a suc­cess.He made the state­ment yes­ter­day in his fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the pro­gramme at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Port-of-Spain.Pow­ell is the founder of Amer­i­ca's Promise Al­liance, a US-based, non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion that helps change the lives of chil­dren.

Pow­ell said: "With all our (Amer­i­ca) wealth, we still have chil­dren who live in pover­ty and are hun­gry."He en­cour­aged T&T busi­ness lead­ers, present at the launch, to get in­volve in the pro­gramme and to en­cour­age their em­ploy­ees to do the same.He added: "These young peo­ple are go­ing to be your fu­ture work­ers and cus­tomers. You will be in­vest­ing in your busi­ness­es and the fu­ture of so­ci­ety."The US has five per cent of the world's pop­u­la­tion and al­so 25 per cent of the world's prison pop­u­la­tion.

"Some­where along the way, when there was the op­por­tu­ni­ty to shape these per­sons, they found bad men­tors. like drugs and gangs."He said the on­ly way to break that cy­cle was to get in­volved in chil­dren's lives at a young age.Pow­ell, a self pro­fessed suc­cess sto­ry of men­tor­ing by his par­ents, sug­gest­ed to the Gov­ern­ment that it ex­tend­ed the reach of the pro­gramme to in­clude chil­dren in pre-school and kinder­garten.Cur­rent­ly, the pro­gramme is aimed at young peo­ple with a lim­it­ed sup­port sys­tem, aged be­tween nine to 25 years old, who were re­ferred by teach­ers, prin­ci­pals and school guid­ance of­fi­cers."You (T&T cit­i­zens) have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as adults to make this a sus­tain­able pro­gramme by par­tic­i­pat­ing and get­ting in­volved," he said.