Anand Ram­per­sad

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) 20 Pledges for 2020 in the area of sport rais­es many ques­tions about the suc­cess­es of the promis­es for 2010-2015.(http://www.votekam­la.tt/down­loads/peo­ples-part­ner­ship-2015-plan.pdf).

Al­though the ideas/plans for 2015-2020 are more strate­gic and en­cour­ag­ing, the ab­sence of a di­rect link to the per­for­mance/out­comes of 2010-15 cre­ates an el­e­ment of con­cern about op­ti­miza­tion of plans for 2015-2020.

Be­fore delv­ing in­to the 2015-2020 ideas/plans for sport, it will be wor­thy to re­view the ideas/plans of 2010 for a few rea­sons:

�2 To find out how many of the ideas/plans were ac­tu­al­ly im­ple­ment­ed and what was the rate of suc­cess; and

�2 To de­ter­mine how many of these suc­cess­es will now serve as a plat­form for the ideas/plans for 2015-2020.

�2 To iden­ti­fy the role of the state and na­tion­al sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions in sport

�2 To clear­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween 'sport for de­vel­op­ment and the de­vel­op­ment of sport'

�2 To use ro­bust em­pir­i­cal da­ta to in­form all poli­cies

In the PP 2010 man­i­festo, sport de­vel­op­ment was con­nect­ed to 'De­vel­op­ing a fit and healthy na­tion,' and 'Sport as an In­dus­try � Mak­ing Sport Self-Suf­fi­cient." http://www.trinidadand­to­bagonews.com/ar­ti­cles/UNC-man­i­festo-2010.pdf.

Sport de­vel­op­ment was placed in­to three (3) cat­e­gories:

�2 De­vel­op our peo­ple through sport

�2 Sport as an in­dus­try

�2 Sport fa­cil­i­ties

Un­der the cat­e­go­ry 'de­vel­op our peo­ple through sport' sev­er­al sub-points were high­light­ed:

�2 Sport is in­te­gral to the pro­mo­tion of healthy lifestyles of our peo­ple

�2 Sport will be an in­te­gral part of cur­ricu­lum from Ear­ly Child­hood to Sec­ondary

�2 Im­ple­ment Poli­cies to de­vel­op both recre­ation­al and com­pet­i­tive di­men­sions of Sports for all lev­els of in­di­vid­ual abil­i­ty

�2 Cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment in which cit­i­zens of all ages are en­cour­aged to par­tic­i­pate in sport, whether recre­ation­al or com­pet­i­tive

�2 Man­date im­ple­ment­ing agen­cies of the Min­istry of Sport to seek and de­vel­op link­ages with ex­ter­nal bod­ies, in­clud­ing aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions, sports acad­e­mies and sports clubs and teams to pro­vide greater op­por­tu­ni­ties for our up­com­ing ath­letes to hone their skills

�2 The Min­istry of Trade will work with the sport­ing as­so­ci­a­tions to en­cour­age sports­men and sports­women to take ad­van­tage of var­i­ous trade agree­ments which af­ford them greater ac­cess to for­eign mar­kets

Five years lat­er these an as­sess­ment of the 2010 man­i­festo pledges should pro­vide an­swers to the fol­low­ing ques­tions:

�2 What pro­grammes have been im­ple­ment­ed over the past five years to ad­dress the is­sue of pro­mot­ing a healthy cit­i­zen­ry. In ad­di­tion to the pro­grammes, the score­card re­port sheet should in­di­cate both ge­o­graph­i­cal and de­mo­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion such as age group, gen­der, re­li­gion etc. In oth­er words, a prop­er as­sess­ment can be made of what was sit­u­a­tion in 2010 and what has hap­pened 5 years lat­er.

�2 In terms of schools, what mea­sures were im­ple­ment­ed to mea­sure the per­for­mance of sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties from Ear­ly Child­hood to Sec­ondary school? How many stu­dents in the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem are phys­i­cal­ly ac­tive? How many are not phys­i­cal­ly ac­tive? What da­ta is avail­able to as­sess the per­for­mance of stu­dents? Are there vari­a­tions base on ge­og­ra­phy, gen­der, so­cial class, re­li­gion, eth­nic­i­ty, ill­ness, dis­abil­i­ties etc?

�2 What have been the poli­cies and im­ple­men­ta­tion strate­gies to en­cour­age res­i­dents in com­mu­ni­ties to utilise fa­cil­i­ties? What da­ta have been used to de­vel­op these poli­cies and who have been the im­ple­ment­ing bod­ies and agen­cies? Is it pos­si­ble to quan­ti­fy the num­ber of per­sons across age, gen­der, re­li­gion, class who par­tic­i­pate in sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties at least 3 times a week for a min­i­mum of 30 min­utes?

�2 What has been some of the part­ner­ship agree­ment be­tween the Min­istry of Sport and lo­cal and for­eign aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions? In what way is the Min­istry of Sport part­ner­ing with UTT and UWI to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties to hone their sport­ing skills while at the same time their aca­d­e­m­ic ad­vance­ment. How many ath­letes have been ben­e­fit­ting from these pro­grammes in the most op­ti­mum man­ner?

�2 What are some of con­nec­tions with sports clubs lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly? Have these li­aisons been ben­e­fi­cial? Can they be de­vel­op fur­ther to con­nect to the de­vel­op­ment of sport tourism and oth­er ar­eas of sport?

�2 What have been some of the ben­e­fits pro­vid­ed through the Min­istry of Trade in terms of af­ford­ing sports­men and sports­women op­por­tu­ni­ties from trade agree­ments and ac­cess to for­eign mar­kets?

For the pe­ri­od 2015-2020 the fo­cal vi­sion re­mains "Sport for All" with­out clear­ly dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween 'sport for de­vel­op­ment' and the 'de­vel­op­ment of sport.'

The pri­or­i­ties are sim­i­lar to what was stat­ed in 2010 fo­cus­ing on:

�2 Skills for a life in sport

�2 Sport­ing com­mu­ni­ties

�2 Cre­ate a na­tion­al frame­work; and the ex­cep­tion be­ing

�2 Es­tab­lish­ing a mo­tor sport fa­cil­i­ty.

The strate­gies iden­ti­fied for the 'Sport for All" vi­sion are: