The Amer­i­c­as Par­a­lympic Com­mit­tee, in con­junc­tion with CAF De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Par­a­lympic Com­mit­tee, pro­vid­ed an up­date on the Trinidad and To­ba­go leg of the Grass­roots Project at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre in Tacarigua on Oc­to­ber 9, 2025. The event was the cul­mi­na­tion of a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort aimed at en­hanc­ing and strength­en­ing the foun­da­tions of Par­a­lympic sport in the Caribbean. In ad­di­tion to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Bar­ba­dos and Guyana were al­so part of the project. Min­is­ter of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Phillip Watts and oth­er min­istry of­fi­cials were al­so in at­ten­dance for the re­port on the project.

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Bank for Re­con­struc­tion and De­vel­op­ment (IBRD) (2025), more com­mon­ly known as the World Bank, over one bil­lion peo­ple, or 16% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, have a dis­abil­i­ty and “on av­er­age as a group are more like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence ad­verse so­cioe­co­nom­ic out­comes than per­sons with­out dis­abil­i­ties.” https://www.world­bank.org/en/top­ic/dis­abil­i­ty#:~:text=Over%20a%20bil­lion%20peo­ple%2C%20or,out­comes%20than%20per­sons%20with­out%20dis­abil­i­ties. While it is pos­si­ble to have a glob­al es­ti­mate, it is dif­fi­cult to state quan­tifi­ably the num­ber of per­sons en­gaged in sport with dis­abil­i­ties due to a lack of uni­ver­sal da­ta.

The Grass­roots Project was the first phase of an over­all dri­ve to es­tab­lish sus­tain­able growth of Par­a­lympic sport through strate­gic pol­i­cy analy­sis, in­fra­struc­ture re­view, and ca­pac­i­ty strength­en­ing.”

· Pub­lic pol­i­cy – The rec­om­men­da­tion calls for re­form and in­te­gra­tion of var­i­ous sport­ing in­sti­tu­tions [such as the cre­ation of a Na­tion­al Sport Coun­cil and the merg­ing of the Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee and the Par­a­lympic Com­mit­tee] to en­sure the leg­isla­tive hu­man rights di­rec­tive. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the leg­isla­tive re­form would in­her­ent­ly re­quire greater pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy.

This is cru­cial for ath­letes with dis­abil­i­ties to reap the ben­e­fits of economies of scale; they will have ac­cess to the re­quired phys­i­cal, hu­man, and eco­nom­ic re­sources nec­es­sary to train and com­pete ef­fec­tive­ly.

· In­fra­struc­ture – Site vis­its to the na­tion­al sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties re­vealed dif­fer­ent lev­els of in­ter­ven­tion re­quired to make the fa­cil­i­ties more user-friend­ly for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

i) High in­ter­ven­tion is re­quired where there are ‘sig­nif­i­cant struc­tur­al and op­er­a­tional mod­i­fi­ca­tions” to en­sure the fa­cil­i­ties (Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and the South­ern Re­gion­al In­door Fa­cil­i­ty) are com­pli­ant with uni­ver­sal stan­dards.

ii) Medi­um in­ter­ven­tion would re­quire tar­get­ed in­ter­ven­tions with­out full ren­o­va­tions (Na­tion­al Rac­quet Cen­tre and Na­tion­al Aquat­ic Cen­tre).

iii) Low in­ter­ven­tion is re­quired where the fa­cil­i­ty is large­ly com­pli­ant with uni­ver­sal ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty stan­dards with min­i­mal im­prove­ments (Na­tion­al Cy­cling Velo­drome).

· Ca­pac­i­ty Build­ing – the rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude:

i) Strength­en­ing ca­pac­i­ty to de­liv­er in­clu­sive sport pro­grammes na­tion­wide

ii) Im­proved abil­i­ty to at­tract and man­age ex­ter­nal fund­ing and part­ner­ships

iii) A sus­tain­able Par­a­lympic de­vel­op­ment frame­work

Min­is­ter Watts ex­pressed his in­ter­est in pro­mot­ing an in­clu­sive sport ecosys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go and wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak to CAF to dis­cuss ways the next phase of the pro­gramme can be­come a re­al­i­ty. The over­all pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­cus­sion were in keep­ing with the Unit­ed Na­tions Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals to Re­duce In­equal­i­ties (SDG10) and Peace, Jus­tice and Strong In­sti­tu­tions (SDG16). Time will hope­ful­ly re­flect the progress.