Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe has made a clar­i­on call to groups who par­tic­i­pate in the Prime Min­is­ter's Best Vil­lage Tro­phy Com­pe­ti­tion to con­tribute more holis­ti­cal­ly to the de­vel­op­ment of their com­mu­ni­ties.

The Min­is­ter made the call over the week­end, as the Best Vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty cel­e­brat­ed its 60th an­niver­sary at the Care­nage Fish Fry fa­cil­i­ty.

While what Min­is­ter Cud­joe said may be open to de­bate, she seemed to be mak­ing a clear state­ment to cul­tur­al and sport­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions who par­tic­i­pate in the an­nu­al ac­tiv­i­ty to widen their scope to all year round, rather than just the weeks where their fo­cus is on reach­ing the pin­na­cle of the com­pe­ti­tion.

Quite point­ed­ly, Min­is­ter Cud­joe told the groups, "You’ve said that you are re­spon­si­ble and can give so much to the schools and your com­mu­ni­ty. How many groups are re­al­ly out there do­ing pro­grammes in your com­mu­ni­ty? How many of you are meet­ing out­side of per­for­mance pe­ri­ods? It’s not on­ly about en­ter­tain­ment and com­pe­ti­tion, it’s about de­vel­op­ment. We, the Gov­ern­ment, pro­vide the nec­es­sary re­sources.”

To be clear, the com­pe­ti­tion, at this stage of its ca­reer, is meet­ing its ma­jor man­date of show­cas­ing as­pects of T&T's rich mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety.

It was start­ed in 1963 to iden­ti­fy and en­cour­age tal­ent from every vil­lage and com­mu­ni­ty and at­tracts par­tic­i­pa­tion from 11 re­gions na­tion­wide.

In­deed, no one can de­ny it has not on­ly show­cased but pro­duced some of the best in­di­vid­ual and group tal­ent T&T has seen over the six decades, through folk the­atre (dra­ma), folk pre­sen­ta­tions (song, mu­sic and dance) and oral tra­di­tions (short sto­ries, po­et­ry and spo­ken word).

What Min­is­ter Cud­joe did not say is that the Best Vil­lage ex­pe­ri­ence has been one of the ac­tiv­i­ties which help to chan­nel pos­i­tive en­er­gies with­in com­mu­ni­ties.

In the cur­rent cli­mate of spi­ralling crime, such ac­tiv­i­ty can be a po­tent tool in the fight against crime since, ul­ti­mate­ly it can help the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and, by ex­ten­sion, the Gov­ern­ment, guide youth away from the in­flu­ence of gang lead­ers.

Ms Cud­joe has clear­ly in­di­cat­ed that there is a $6 mil­lion bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion, via the Care Grant pro­gramme, to help com­mu­ni­ty groups mo­bilise for the com­pe­ti­tion this year, and notes her min­istry is keen to al­lo­cate those funds to de­sirous en­ti­ties. More im­por­tant­ly, though, the Min­is­ter is hop­ing the ca­ma­raderie en­gen­dered dur­ing this process can be har­nessed through­out the year and con­vert­ed to a po­tent tool of change.

As of last week­end, there were 240 groups reg­is­tered to par­tic­i­pate in this year's com­pe­ti­tion. No cit­i­zen will com­plain if this $6 mil­lion ul­ti­mate­ly suc­ceeds in deny­ing the gang lords more young re­cruits.

But while we un­der­stand this com­mu­ni­ty-based ac­tiv­i­ty must now al­so work to ad­dress the grow­ing crime prob­lem, with pro­grammes like Life Sport still with­in our rear-view mir­ror, we cer­tain­ly hope the Min­is­ter will do all in her pow­er to en­sure due dili­gence is ex­er­cised in the al­lo­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of the state's re­sources to en­sure the ul­ti­mate goal is achieved.