Lee An­na Ma­haraj

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

The Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca has in­vest­ed US$40,000 in an ef­fort to help T&T com­bat school vi­o­lence.

The fund­ing which is com­ing from the US Bu­reau of In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics and Law En­force­ment will as­sist the Roots Foun­da­tionTT in the ex­e­cu­tion of the Aim High pro­gramme, which was launched on Fri­day at the Gov­ern­ment Plaza, Rich­mond Street, Port-of-Spain.

The four schools se­lect­ed are—East Mu­cu­rapo Sec­ondary School, Mu­cu­rapo West Sec­ondary School, Aranguez North Sec­ondary School and San Juan North Sec­ondary School.

Aim High, ac­cord­ing to Mti­ba Sol­wazi, the Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of Roots, stands for Amaz­ing, In­tel­li­gent, Mo­ti­vat­ed, Heal­ing In­ward­ly, and Grow­ing Hap­pi­ly.

Sol­wazi said it was de­signed to fos­ter en­tre­pre­neur­ship and vol­un­teerism among youths and will fo­cus on fields such as ro­bot­ics, fash­ion de­sign, and film mak­ing.

One form teacher of San Juan North Sec­ondary, Wi­lesse Aisha Ot­ten-An­nisette, shared a tes­ti­mo­ny about her stu­dents’ progress.

“When the team came in­to the class­room, my chil­dren opened up ... they en­gaged with the fa­cil­i­ta­tors in a way that they don’t even en­gage with us the teach­ers. Bit by bit, we have seen changes. A mir­a­cle hasn’t hap­pened, we are still go­ing through the process of change,” she said.

Ot­ten-An­nisette en­cour­aged the oth­er stu­dents present to de­vel­op a sim­i­lar open-mind­ed­ness.

“Hope­ful­ly, you all are go­ing to be will­ing to al­low the Roots Foun­da­tion to guide you to the path of aim­ing high be­cause we have to change the nar­ra­tive. Our schools can­not con­tin­ue to be breed­ing grounds for crim­i­nal­i­ty and delin­quen­cy. So young peo­ple, I en­cour­age you, I urge you, I beg you, to go in­to this pro­gramme with open minds, with will­ing­ness, be­cause this is for you and for the fu­ture of our na­tion,” she said.

Soleil La Bar­rie, a 16-year-old, St Joseph Con­vent, San Fer­nan­do, stu­dent per­formed a spo­ken word piece on bul­ly­ing based on her own ex­pe­ri­ences.

“When peo­ple tell me things like, my fore­head large, all I re­al­ly know to do is laugh, be­cause any oth­er re­sponse is not ac­cept­ed, and in or­der to be re­spect­ed you can’t take things too se­ri­ous to seem sen­si­tive or in­fe­ri­or. Be­cause if it’s every day for years, it’s not fun­ny any­more ... Sticks and stones will break my bones, and words and all does hurt me. And I know that’s not the say­ing, but I find it should change, be­cause I put the blame on say­ings like that that lie, to give free rein and bly to every­body that have some­thing to say,” she said.

Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador to T&T, Can­dace Bond, ref­er­ences the Mighty Spar­row’s “School Days Are Hap­py Days”, say­ing she wish­es stu­dents can re­turn to hav­ing those kinds of days.

“We have seen in­creased cas­es of bul­ly­ing, cy­ber­bul­ly­ing, vi­o­lence, and in some in­stances crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty with­in schools since we re­turned to in-per­son school fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. For many stu­dents, school days are no longer hap­py days at all. It is for this rea­son that we have part­nered with the Roots Foun­da­tion to launch this im­por­tant and time­ly project to help ad­dress many of these chal­lenges,” Bond said.

Bond added that they hope to re­duce the like­li­hood of stu­dents en­gag­ing in vi­o­lent ac­tiv­i­ties through the pro­gramme.

“This will be done through ad­dress­ing psy­choso­cial is­sues, such as fam­i­ly and per­son­al trau­ma, self-es­teem, and hope­less­ness. This project al­so pro­vides val­ues-based, goal-set­ting, and oth­er life and so­cial skills train­ing, along with in­volve­ment in ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties,” she said.