The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee con­tin­ued to ad­vance its agen­da of in­spir­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of fe­male T&T Olympians and cre­at­ing gen­der eq­ui­ty on all lev­els for women and girls in sport when it launched its lat­est ini­tia­tive, Girls Got Next, Thurs­day morn­ing at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre, Tacarigua.

Girls Got Next is a ten-part video doc­u­men­tary se­ries, pro­fil­ing the ca­reer and life jour­neys of sev­er­al lo­cal past and present T&T Olympians, seek­ing to am­pli­fy their sta­tus as pos­i­tive role mod­els for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

Among those to be fea­tured are this coun­try's first-ever fe­male Olympian, for­mer sprint­er Lau­ra Pierre-James; swim­mer Karen Di­ef­fen­thaller; mul­ti-time Olympic shot put fi­nal­ist Cleopa­tra Borel; for­mer ham­mer throw­er Can­dace Scott; Taek­won­do in Cheryl Ann Sankar; and oth­ers.

Speak­ing at the launch, TTOC pres­i­dent Di­ane Hen­der­son said, "It is a de­lib­er­ate, fo­cused ef­fort to en­gage and up­lift our young women. help­ing them to see a fu­ture in sport that is not on­ly pos­si­ble, but at­tain­able. A fu­ture that they can claim with con­fi­dence."

The launch event it­self was a dy­nam­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of this ob­jec­tive, as it brought to­geth­er a room full of some of T&T's most cel­e­brat­ed and ac­com­plished women in sport, in­clud­ing Pierre-James; Par­a­lympic sprint­er Nyoshia Cain-Clax­ton; Sankar; and for­mer T&T bas­ket­baller and Guardian Me­dia News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor - Sport, Rachael Thomp­son-King, who all con­tributed to a riv­et­ing pan­el dis­cus­sion.

The se­ries was co-pro­duced by pub­lic and me­dia re­la­tions con­sul­tant Nicole Duke-West­field and me­dia con­sul­tant Fran­ka Phillip, who re­lat­ed the shared mar­vel ex­pe­ri­enced in ex­tract­ing the var­i­ous sto­ry­lines and sub­ject mat­ter.

Phillip said, "More than 50 women have rep­re­sent­ed this coun­try at the Olympics and in a range of events. The ide­al thing for us would have been to just call them all. But a lot of them don't even live here, and some of them don't even want to be in­ter­viewed be­cause their time rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go was so painful and they felt so un­der-recog­nised.

"But our task was to tell sto­ries that would re­flect the pas­sion, the dis­ci­pline and the com­mit­ment that these women showed in their quest to rep­re­sent T&T. So for us, the ques­tion was, 'How do we strike that bal­ance?' What blew me away was, of course, there were very strong sim­i­lar­i­ties be­cause there are spe­cif­ic cul­tur­al con­di­tions that af­fect all of us, but when you look at how each per­son had dif­fer­ent things to deal with, that was re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing and, at some points, quite heart­break­ing."

Those at­tend­ing yes­ter­day's launch were treat­ed to a pre­view video fea­tur­ing sev­er­al of the in­ter­vie­wees. One of the en­thralling pieces cen­tres around the sto­ry of Pierre-James, who was just 16 when she rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the 1972 Mu­nich Olympic Games, be­com­ing the first woman to do so.

Pierre-James spoke of her ap­proach to sport as a young la­dy in a male-dom­i­nat­ed pro­fes­sion. "Dur­ing my time, it was such a dif­fi­cult time, be­ing a young la­dy try­ing to move for­ward in a so-called male-dom­i­nat­ed sys­tem. But com­ing from a fam­i­ly of ten, I saw the mo­ment when I could have got­ten out of this (liv­ing in a two-bed­room home). Sport took me a long way to­ward ob­tain­ing a schol­ar­ship to build my ed­u­ca­tion­al back­ground and to forge me for­ward."

It is the kind of back­sto­ry the se­ries will aim to bring out, as even more than 50 years lat­er, it par­al­lels the ex­pe­ri­ences of women and girls in sport to­day, ac­cord­ing to TTOC vice pres­i­dent and Gen­der Eq­ui­ty Com­mis­sion chair Son­ja John­son, who said, "That is why our com­mis­sion has set three clear pri­or­i­ties: to in­crease the num­ber of young women who par­tic­i­pate in sport and re­main en­gaged be­yond sec­ondary school, to de­sign path­ways that will one day de­liv­er T&T’s first fe­male Olympic medal, and to ex­pand the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in sport ad­min­is­tra­tion, en­sur­ing that women’s voic­es are heard and val­ued in de­ci­sion-mak­ing. Girls Got Next is strate­gi­cal­ly aligned with these pri­or­i­ties. It is the bridge be­tween as­pi­ra­tion and achieve­ment. It is the plat­form that will help us move from vi­sion to re­al­i­ty."

The TTOC's Girls Got Next se­ries will be rolled out via the com­mit­tee's dig­i­tal me­dia plat­forms in the com­ing weeks.