SASCHA WIL­SON

As the coun­try grap­ples with vi­o­lence and crime, Ro­man Catholic Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don be­lieves this scourge can be mit­i­gat­ed by up­lift­ing un­der­de­vel­oped com­mu­ni­ties.

He made the com­ment while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the Rapid­fire Kidz Foun­da­tion (RFK) gala din­ner in cel­e­bra­tion of its tenth an­niver­sary at Achiev­ers Hall, Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day.

Arch­bish­op Gor­don said the re­al chal­lenges fac­ing T&T in­clud­ed the he­do­nis­tic cul­ture that had tak­en over the coun­try, crime and vi­o­lence and the lack of val­ues that have crept right through the so­ci­ety.

He said that while a com­mon tra­di­tion in all re­li­gions was care for the poor and vul­ner­a­ble, care must be more than just a hand-out. He said it must ex­tend to en­tire com­mu­ni­ties where un­der­de­vel­op­ment for gen­er­a­tions had pro­duced very bad life choic­es for peo­ple who had grown up in those com­mu­ni­ties.

“Some­thing is wrong in a beau­ti­ful na­tion like T&T if we can’t find a way that every com­mu­ni­ty al­lows every child to achieve their best po­ten­tial. That has to be our dream that has to be our vi­sion. And when we work to­wards that, we will not have the gangs or the vi­o­lence on the streets or the mur­der rate that we have now. We would dry it up by giv­ing peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ties to dream for some­thing much big­ger and much bet­ter.”

Gor­don said the gold­en rule of all re­li­gions to “do on­to oth­ers that you would have do on­to you,” should be made the heart of the val­ue sys­tem of T&T.

“We need to re­build the val­ue sys­tem of this na­tion from the ground up and start with the chil­dren and the adults and start ask­ing peo­ple the hard ques­tions of whether this is re­al­ly good val­ues or not. And un­til val­ues be­come a watch­word with­in our so­ci­ety, we will not be able to face the more dif­fi­cult chal­lenges we face,” the Arch­bish­op said.

Last week dur­ing his ad­dress at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T’s grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), Gor­don had al­so lament­ed that the rate of crime and cor­rup­tion in this coun­try was at a dan­ger­ous lev­el.

He al­so not­ed that the coun­try’s mur­der rate had been in the top sev­en in the world.

There have been more than 521 mur­ders for the year so far.

Re­cent­ly, the na­tion was shocked by a video show­ing pupils of Rose Hill RC Pri­ma­ry School in Laven­tille ly­ing on the floor of their class­room while duck­ing un­der desks, with their teacher urg­ing them stay down as gun­shots rang out near their school. Last Fri­day, stu­dents of Anstey Memo­r­i­al Girls An­gli­can School in San Fer­nan­do were al­so left trau­ma­tised af­ter a man shot his wife and him­self near the school. There have al­so been sev­er­al in­ci­dents of school vi­o­lence across the coun­try.

RKF will grow stronger

Al­so speak­ing at the event, RKF pres­i­dent Kevin Rati­ram thanked his team and every­one who sup­ports them, in­clud­ing spon­sor At­lantic LNG and ser­vice provider See-Vu Op­ti­cal.

Say­ing the jour­ney had not been with­out its chal­lenges, he re­called that the idea for the foun­da­tion was sparked through the lyrics “Gun­men gone astray” by Machel Mon­tano and Ben­jai’s Amnesty song back in Ju­ly 2012.

He said, “I said then that the song and the lyrics were re­flec­tive of what was hap­pen­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go and I felt that it was time that we, the good peo­ple, stood up to save our coun­try.”

While some peo­ple live a priv­i­leged life, he said, many faced un­told chal­lenges and need to be helped and not crit­i­cised and aban­doned. He not­ed that two of the foun­da­tion’s ma­jor ac­tiv­i­ties are their Eyes Right Project, where 957 glass­es were giv­en to school chil­dren and their chil­dren’s play­park at Palmiste Park, San Fer­nan­do.