The odds were solid­ly stacked against Wayne Chance when he found­ed Vi­sion on Mis­sion (VOM) a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago. He was still in­car­cer­at­ed but as he proved by the life of ser­vice and ac­tivism he lived af­ter his re­lease, prison bars did not hin­der his pas­sion­ate pur­suit of a vi­sion of es­tab­lish­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion in­to so­ci­ety of ex-pris­on­ers and de­por­tees.

By the ex­em­plary life he lived af­ter com­plet­ing his prison sen­tence, Mr Chance de­fied the odds, in­clud­ing a re­cidi­vism rate of 74 per cent which re­sults in most ex-of­fend­ers re­turn­ing to prison. On the oc­ca­sions that Mr Chance did re­turn to jail, it was not as an of­fend­er but as an ac­tivist and ad­vo­cate to es­tab­lish VOM pro­grammes. He lob­bied long and hard for the hu­man rights of in­mates to be re­spect­ed and demon­strat­ed through his suc­cess as a hus­band, fa­ther and di­rec­tor of one of the coun­try's best known non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGO) how pos­si­ble it is to shift gears, change course and em­bark on a pos­i­tive mis­sion.

Many were the ob­sta­cles he faced and over­came over the years, the most mon­u­men­tal of which was stig­ma and dis­crim­i­na­tion. Doors were closed in his face as he strug­gled to reg­is­ter VOM be­cause civ­il so­ci­ety groups and pri­vate-sec­tor or­gan­i­sa­tions were not con­vinced that an ex-of­fend­er was ca­pa­ble of spear­head­ing such an in­no­v­a­tive re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ef­fort.

Over and over, Mr Chance proved his de­trac­tors wrong. His break­through came when Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, then the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, latched on to the vi­sion and pro­vid­ed tan­gi­ble sup­port to VOM.

Even af­ter that, there were many hur­dles along the way for Mr Chance and the mem­bers of his team but VOM now stands as tes­ti­mo­ny to his re­mark­able ac­com­plish­ments, achieved with a pas­sion and per­sis­tence well worth em­u­lat­ing.

Wayne Chance per­son­i­fied restora­tive jus­tice, a con­cept that was wide­ly mis­un­der­stood and re­ject­ed un­til he made it his mis­sion. His unique ap­proach to pris­on­er re­form changed the way the au­thor­i­ties and the wider pub­lic viewed re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and paved the way for the heal­ing and ac­count­abil­i­ty that are at the heart of that sys­tem.

Thanks to his ef­forts, a trans­for­ma­tion is tak­ing place in T&T's crim­i­nal jus­tice in­fra­struc­ture which is be­gin­ning to evolve from puni­tive to non-ad­ver­sar­i­al and non-ret­ribu­tive.

Through Mr Chance's VOM, hun­dreds of ex-of­fend­ers have had gen­uine op­por­tu­ni­ties to rein­te­grate and re­set­tle in­to so­ci­ety and con­tribute to build­ing health­i­er, safer com­mu­ni­ties.

Guardian Me­dia joins the na­tion in mourn­ing the loss of this gi­ant of a man and of­fers con­do­lences to his wid­ow, chil­dren, his VOM fam­i­ly and all the peo­ple in­volved in restora­tive jus­tice in this coun­try who are now left to deal with the void cre­at­ed by his death.

Wayne Chance now takes his place among the pan­theon of na­tion­al he­roes no longer with us who ded­i­cat­ed their lives to mak­ing T&T a bet­ter place. May he rest in eter­nal peace.