"Women get up from the couch and get ac­tive."

This from Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs Sham­fa Cud­joe, who yes­ter­day at the launch of the Ven­ture Cred­it Union 5K at the Hilton, en­cour­aged all to get in­to phys­i­cal fit­ness es­pe­cial­ly women in this coun­try.

The 20th edi­tion of the run and fun walk event themed "In­spir­ing Uni­ty, Up­hold­ing In­tegri­ty" will take place on Sep­tem­ber 20 start­ing at 6.30 am fol­low­ing the warm-up pe­ri­od from 6.15 am at the Ven­ture Cred­it Union build­ing, 32 South­ern Main Road in Cou­va.

"Phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and phys­i­cal fit­ness are im­por­tant. The min­istry is mak­ing small steps for women to get in­to phys­i­cal fit­ness, to change the cul­ture. The theme is in line with the na­tion­al pol­i­cy of to­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion in sports. Next Thurs­day, the min­istry will be em­bark­ing on a huge cam­paign to push fit­ness and men­tal health," said the avid run­ner, as he made ref­er­ence to her own ex­pe­ri­ence, us­ing run­ning as a tool to deal with a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od in her life.

Reg­is­tra­tion has be­gun and it is $100 for an adult and per­sons 18 and un­der (pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools), $30. The Min­is­ter backed up her talk of get­ting ac­tive by shar­ing that she will com­pete in the 5K and de­clared that the min­istry will spon­sor reg­is­tra­tion for 20 women to par­tic­i­pate in the race.

Two cheques were pre­sent­ed to the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee at the launch from the Ven­ture Cred­it Union worth $300,000 and $30,000 from CU­NA Caribbean in­sur­ance.

Hay­den Fer­reira, pres­i­dent of the board of di­rec­tors Ven­ture Cred­it Union spoke on the vi­brant his­to­ry of the event which has ad­vanced to an in­ter­na­tion­al af­fair. He al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to recog­nise the win­ner of the in­au­gur­al race, a 6K, Matthew De Gril­la, who was in at­ten­dance.

"Last year, 1,900 par­tic­i­pat­ed and this year we are hop­ing to in­crease 2,000," said Fer­reira. "The 5K has grown from a com­mu­ni­ty race to a na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al event."

In his short ad­dress, An­dre Goin­doo, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) at CU­NA, said, the com­pa­ny has been a great sup­port­er of the event for at least 10 years ago where par­tic­i­pants will be com­pet­ing for the Dex­ter E Bax­ter Chal­lenge tro­phy.

"Bax­ter was very pas­sion­ate about this race. He was al­ways in­volved from the be­gin­ning to the end," said Goin­doo, who al­so en­cour­aged all to get in­to some sort of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty.

On the big day, the top five lo­cal fin­ish­ers, men's and women's will be award­ed prize mon­ey. In the Open T&T cat­e­go­ry, the win­ner will take home TT$2,000, the run­ner-up gets TT$1,500, third place TT$1,200, fourth place TT$1,000 and fifth place, TT$800.

The top four fin­ish­ers in the Open & In­ter­na­tion­al (men's and women's) will re­ceive US$700 for first place, US$500 for sec­ond place, third US$300 and fourth, US$200.

There will al­so be prizes for the top three places in the age group cat­e­gories -Un­der-15, 15-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-59 and 60 and over - first place gets TT$300, sec­ond TT$200 and third, TT$150 and a spe­cial prize (dis­abled) worth TT$200.

Reg­is­tra­tion forms can be col­lect­ed at three of the Cred­it Union's branch­es in­clud­ing Arou­ca, Cou­va and San Fer­nan­do and on­line, on the Ven­ture Cred­it Union web­site

There will al­so be awards for teams in­clud­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions, cred­it unions, schools, cor­po­ra­tions and gyms/fit­ness groups in the fun walk.