Found­ing mem­ber and pres­i­dent of the Net­work of Rur­al Women Pro­duc­ers of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NR­W­PTT), Gia Gas­pard-Tay­lor, says while T&T has been mak­ing changes, the fight for girls’ rights is not over.

She made the com­ment dur­ing an event com­mem­o­rat­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the Girl Child yes­ter­day.

“We have made some ad­vance­ments, yes, but there’s a lot to be done,” she said, not­ing that girls’ rights and fu­tures should be cel­e­brat­ed every day of the year.

She added, “I think ed­u­ca­tion is a pow­er­ful tool that can help es­cape pover­ty, vi­o­lence, ear­ly mar­riage, as it can al­so help them de­vel­op skills and con­fi­dence need­ed to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in the so­ci­ety of to­day.”

The theme of In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the Girl Child 2022 was “Our time is now—our rights, our fu­ture.”

This is why Gas­pard-Tay­lor said, “Our young women see prob­lems every day of the year and there­fore one day can nev­er be suf­fi­cient...and the time is now, al­ways now, every day of the year now.”

Ac­cord­ing to Gas­pard-Tay­lor, who re­cent­ly re­ceived the Gold Medal for the De­vel­op­ment of Women at the Na­tion­al Awards Cer­e­mo­ny, the is­sue of girls’ rights and de­vel­op­ment is not one that must be ad­dressed by the lead­ers of the coun­try but by every­one.

“We can­not sit back and wait on the Gov­ern­ment. We, as a com­mu­ni­ty and as a so­ci­ety, must do our own to en­sure that our girls are pro­tect­ed. All the par­ents have to do their own thing.”

Gas­pard-Tay­lor stressed that peo­ple need to de­vel­op and en­cour­age re­spect for girls, re­gard­less of their ages.

Cre­do Foun­da­tion out­reach pro­gramme co­or­di­na­tor, Car­lene Don­ald, echoed the sen­ti­ments of Gas­pard-Tay­lor. She said girls’ rights and fu­tures should be cel­e­brat­ed every day of the year, since “with­in two to three days, this (In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the Girl Child) would be non-ex­is­tent in our minds.”

Don­ald em­pha­sised that cit­i­zens of T&T, in­clud­ing men, need­ed to in­form them­selves and cre­ate pub­lic aware­ness re­gard­ing the rights of the na­tion’s young girls, which may in turn con­vey a sense of em­pow­er­ment in the girls.

“Em­pow­er­ment is the key... they feel un­heard, they feel un­em­pow­ered, and at times they feel very hope­less...you see that sup­port that you give to these young girls, I think that is most im­por­tant, be­ing em­pow­ered and be­ing sup­port­ive to them.”

Don­ald added, “We need to pro­tect our girls’ men­tal and phys­i­cal health. We need to look at pro­grammes that will con­stant­ly sup­port the girls, our gov­ern­ment agen­cies or even the cor­po­rate sec­tor should look at fund­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions that are ca­pa­ble enough to ex­e­cute such projects to em­pow­er our young girls and make a bet­ter T&T.”

On De­cem­ber 19, 2011, the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly de­clared Oc­to­ber 11 as the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the Girl Child. It aimed to recog­nise girls’ rights and the unique chal­lenges they face around the world. This year marks the 10th an­niver­sary of that dri­ve.