A 17-mem­ber squad from Team Hope (How Or­di­nary Peo­ple do Ex­tra­or­di­nary things) will trav­el to Bar­ba­dos to­day to com­pete in the Bar­ba­dos Triathlon on Sun­day.

The group start­ed as a bi­en­ni­al fundrais­er which pig­gy­backed off the Rain­bow Cup triathlon to raise aware­ness for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py.

Since par­tic­i­pat­ing at this year's Rain­bow Cup, Team Hope has evolved and has rep­re­sent­ed well at the T&T triathlon with sev­er­al of them medal­ing in their var­i­ous age groups.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from Team Hope, the trip is not about just com­pet­ing.

While in Bar­ba­dos, Hopees will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the De­part­ment of Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion at Queen Eliz­a­beth Hos­pi­tal to see, first hand, how an Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Ther­a­py Unit op­er­ates and how cit­i­zens ben­e­fit from hav­ing ac­cess to these ser­vices in a pub­lic hos­pi­tal.

At least ten per cent of the pop­u­la­tion has a dis­abil­i­ty, there­fore there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150,000 peo­ple in T&T liv­ing with a dis­abil­i­ty that could be re­me­di­at­ed, re­duced or re­ha­bil­i­tat­ed by these ther­a­pies and ser­vices.

Many of these in­di­vid­u­als are un­able to ac­cess treat­ment due to a lack of aware­ness of the dis­ci­plines, lack of ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to ther­a­pists in pub­lic do­mains, fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties or avail­abil­i­ty of oth­er re­sources. Hav­ing ac­cess to oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py ser­vices would al­low such in­di­vid­u­als to max­i­mize their func­tion, lead per­son­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing lives and par­tic­i­pate mean­ing­ful­ly in so­ci­ety.

Team Hope is a unique com­mu­ni­ty-based fundrais­ing and ad­vo­ca­cy pro­gramme of the T&T Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Ther­a­py As­so­ci­a­tion (T&TO­TA). It is used to raise pub­lic aware­ness for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and al­so to high­light the need for oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py ser­vices in this coun­try.

It is the be­lief that per­sons have a right to full par­tic­i­pa­tion in com­mu­ni­ty life de­spite men­tal or phys­i­cal health sta­tus or dis­abil­i­ty. OTs are health pro­fes­sion­als who help such peo­ple across the lifes­pan to par­tic­i­pate in the tasks they want and need to do through the ther­a­peu­tic use of every­day ac­tiv­i­ties (oc­cu­pa­tions).

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are on­ly 8 reg­is­tered and prac­tic­ing OTs in all of T&T with 1 work­ing in a pub­lic hos­pi­tal. There is a grow­ing and des­per­ate need to im­prove health­care ser­vices for all.

This will be Team Hope's first in­volve­ment in a triathlon out­side of T&T and this ex­pe­ri­ence will al­so deep­en the Hopee's un­der­stand­ing of oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py and will ul­ti­mate­ly make them bet­ter am­bas­sadors when they re­turn to T&T.

Team Hope has been for­tu­nate to have on­board Gold spon­sor, At­lantic, Sil­ver spon­sor, Ask Lead­er­ship Foun­da­tion and Bronze Spon­sor, Dan­non.

Team: Priya Gomes, Derek Daniel, Aliya Drakes, Keisha Lind­say, Raoul Ed­wards, Nigel Wall, Nico­la De Pass, Saman­tha Montserin, Briony Baden-Sem­per, Kiy­o­mi Rankin, Al­is­tair Bea­dle, Seldette Johnet­ty, Ar­lene Ham­blin, Georgina Ter­ry, Mar­tin Lewis.

Of­fi­cials: Adri­an Don Mo­ra, He­len Drakes, Lark Am­bris.