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Saturday, July 26, 2025

Youngsters make Heroes Foundation mural project a reality

by

Guardian Media Limited
678 days ago
20230915

Chil­dren in T&T are bold­ly cham­pi­oning peace and uni­ty at the He­roes Foun­da­tion in Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain. The strik­ing mur­al now adorn­ing the He­roes head­quar­ters is the out­come of a com­mu­ni­ca­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy ini­tia­tive by 30 lo­cal and mi­grant par­tic­i­pants in the He­roes De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (HDP). They aim to in­spire pos­i­tive so­ci­etal change.

HDP is a com­pre­hen­sive three-year pro­gramme de­signed for sec­ondary school stu­dents in Forms One to Three and mi­grant youths aged 11 to 17.

De­vel­oped with UNICEF's sup­port, this Caribbean-fo­cused cur­ricu­lum blends psy­choso­cial de­vel­op­ment and sus­tain­abil­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion with child and youth-led ad­vo­ca­cy and ac­tion. The mur­al project is part of the Web­Pal in­te­gra­tion ac­tiv­i­ty, sup­port­ed by the Pan-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion (PADF) and Pro­tec Group, where par­tic­i­pants learn about each oth­er's cul­tures, share ex­pe­ri­ences, un­der­stand dif­fer­ent lan­guages, and build a sense of com­mu­ni­ty in safe spaces.

Among these bud­ding change­mak­ers is Leor­bei­dys, a 13-year-old who played a piv­otal role in con­cep­tu­al­is­ing the mur­al. Her favourite mes­sage, "One Plan­et, One Peo­ple–Peace Is What We Need," em­bod­ies her vi­sion of a har­mo­nious world root­ed in mu­tu­al re­spect. She elo­quent­ly ex­plains, "I be­lieve that we can co­ex­ist peace­ful­ly, with­out prob­lems and dis­crim­i­na­tion, if we re­spect one an­oth­er.  I hope this mur­al en­cour­ages peo­ple to make our coun­try bet­ter, just like He­roes Foun­da­tion en­cour­ages and sup­ports us to do bet­ter to­geth­er."

Lawrence Ar­joon, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the He­roes Foun­da­tion, em­pha­sised the po­ten­tial and es­sen­tial role of young peo­ple in shap­ing a brighter fu­ture, stat­ing, “While young peo­ple of­ten re­main silent ob­servers in our so­ci­ety, they pos­sess pro­found in­sights from their unique per­spec­tives and lived ex­pe­ri­ences. Here at He­roes, we are un­wa­ver­ing in our com­mit­ment to lis­ten to their voic­es and em­pow­er them with the skills and knowl­edge nec­es­sary to pave the way for safe and sus­tain­able lifestyles. The more we in­vest in their growth to­day, the more promis­ing our fu­ture be­comes.”

PADF pro­gramme man­ag­er, Han­nah Gabrielle Kat­wa­roo, not­ed, “The Pan Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Foun­da­tion has been sup­port­ing the holis­tic, pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment of both lo­cal and mi­grant chil­dren through its part­ner­ship with the He­roes Foun­da­tion for over three years. Through HDP and its cur­ricu­lum, we have man­aged to cre­ate in­no­v­a­tive, shared and safe spaces for all chil­dren to ac­quire key life skills, learn a new lan­guage, par­tic­i­pate in ser­vice-dri­ven projects and de­vel­op their un­der­stand­ing of so­cial is­sues that im­pact their sense of safe­ty, liveli­hood and well-be­ing.

“Through ad­vo­ca­cy projects such as this mur­al paint­ing ex­er­cise, as a so­ci­ety, we are able to vis­i­bly wit­ness these ac­quired skills in prac­tice and in­ter­act with their pas­sion as young agents of so­cial change.”

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