The son of a mur­der vic­tim says his fa­ther’s death has spurred him to give back to the com­mu­ni­ties to help dis­ad­van­taged youth.

Ak­ili Joseph, of Vance Trace, Point Fortin, said his fa­ther was shot dead in 2016, and the event changed his life.

He sub­se­quent­ly formed Strong Tow­er Res­cue Foun­da­tion, a Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO), de­signed to help dis­ad­van­taged youth.

Joseph’s fa­ther, Rod­ney, was gunned down while on his way to work in Or­ange Field Road, Chase Vil­lage. He was killed as part of an on­go­ing war be­tween two com­mu­ni­ties.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, now 19-year-old Joseph re­called this as a defin­ing mo­ment in his life.

“I re­mem­ber very vivid­ly be­cause it was the 14 of Au­gust - it’s not some­thing that you for­get. I woke up on that Sun­day morn­ing and one of my cousins, she ran up­stairs and she was cry­ing and she told me your fa­ther was just mur­dered in Ch­agua­nas,” he said.

For the ma­jor­i­ty of his life, his moth­er raised him but de­spite this, he still had a re­la­tion­ship with his fa­ther who re­mained a part of his life.

“I knew him and I loved him and to lose a fa­ther. It trau­ma­tizes you, es­pe­cial­ly be­ing the 16-year-old child that I was,” he said.

Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, Joseph had dif­fi­cul­ties cop­ing with his loss as he be­gan to fall be­hind in school and with­drew from so­cial in­ter­ac­tions.

“I fought to over­come it and when I look back to where I was, I have more of an un­der­stand­ing and more of an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for those peo­ple who are in that place. So I de­cid­ed to do some­thing or put to­geth­er some­thing, or be a part of some­thing that would be able to as­sist youths who are in that place and that is the pur­pose of the Strong Tow­er Res­cue Foun­da­tion,” Joseph said.

He be­gan lay­ing the foun­da­tion for the NGO last year and the group was of­fi­cial­ly launched in March this year.

Joseph, along with some 20 youths rang­ing from ages 12 to 18 reg­u­lar­ly en­gage in com­mu­ni­ty-based ac­tiv­i­ties such as build­ing and main­tain­ing drains as well as as­sist­ing the el­ders of the com­mu­ni­ty by clean­ing up their sur­round­ings or even help­ing them with home re­pairs.

These ac­tiv­i­ties, he said, worked two-fold to first­ly make a dif­fer­ence in so­ci­ety as well as to de­vel­op with­in the youth a strong work eth­ic and com­mit­ment to their com­mu­ni­ty.

“In every com­mu­ni­ty, there is that back area where there is on­ly bro­ken down hous­es, where the crime and the drugs pass­ing…and you would look at that and say, not me and them. That’s where we want to tar­get. That’s where we want to make a dif­fer­ence. That’s where we want to pull those youths out of so that we would be able to have an im­pact on their lives,” he said.

Asked what he thinks his fa­ther would say if he could see the work that he’s been do­ing, Joseph said: “My dad grew up in one of these very com­mu­ni­ties and his death was as a re­sult of no one be­ing able to reach out to him and point him in the di­rec­tion that I am point­ing these youths in, so I think he would be very sat­is­fied.”