A pro­gramme de­signed to em­brace sports from the Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary School lev­els right up to the cre­ation of in­ter­na­tion­al ath­letes has fi­nal­ly been launched and is ready to achieve its ob­jec­tives.

The 'I Choose Sport' pro­gramme is the brain­child of the Min­is­ter of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis and at the launch at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain on Mon­day evening spoke glow­ing­ly of the pro­gramme and the pow­er of sport to our com­mu­ni­ty.

Though not an ath­lete, Cud­joe-Lewis has not on­ly em­braced her role in the sport­ing fra­ter­ni­ty but has ex­tend­ed her­self to­ward the de­vel­op­ment of sports in the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic, shar­ing an ex­pe­ri­ence she had when she as­sumed the role of sports min­is­ter which would have in­flu­enced her de­ci­sion on the pro­gramme.

"I took you back to 2018 be­cause, on April 9, I had to deal with the frus­tra­tion of TV6 and a mere 11 days lat­er, I found my­self at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um where I was called to hand out medals at a Sec­ondary Schools Track and Field Com­pe­ti­tion, and when I went there, I was so sur­prised that the ex­cite­ment and the turnout, and the crowd, and all that I was ac­cus­tomed to I didn't find it at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um."

Dis­ap­point­ed, Cud­joe-Lewis said: "The turnout was poor and for some of the schools, it looked like the teach­ers said 'alyuh come leh we go down there and run'. It lacked struc­ture, it lacked or­gan­i­sa­tion, some of the chil­dren didn't have on any uni­form or the prop­er gear to com­pete in.

"I re­mem­ber re­turn­ing to the of­fice and think­ing how do I fix this, and then I told what are you do­ing try­ing to fix that, 'that is not your busi­ness, your re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is tak­ing care of sports for adults.' I was point­ed to the gazette that said my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty was sports for adults."

Ac­cord­ing to Cud­joe-Lewis: "Then, I asked how do I get in­volved in sports for schools and I was told that any­thing re­gard­ing sport in schools is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. So I felt cheat­ed, I felt hood­winked, be­cause you ex­pect me to make good and make mag­ic out of sports for adults with­out the abil­i­ty or not be­ing able to in­ter­vene at the lev­el of sports in schools. So there and then, I was de­ter­mined to strength­en our part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to­wards ac­com­plish­ing this goal."

In 2023, the Min­istry of Sports and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, led by Cud­joe-Lewis, con­duct­ed two stud­ies in Ja­maica, aimed at gain­ing a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of their sports sys­tem and iden­ti­fy­ing what were their key fac­tors that led to their suc­cess, pri­mar­i­ly in ath­let­ics, but al­so the foun­da­tion that the sport sys­tem rests on to cre­ate sus­tained suc­cess.

This ex­hi­bi­tion stemmed from a man­date by the Cab­i­net to lead the charge for de­vel­op­ing a ro­bust sports pro­gramme that even­tu­al­ly led to the birth of the 'I Choose Sport' pro­gramme.

Ka­iron Ser­rette, Head of Part­ner­ships and Al­liance at the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T said the pro­gramme was de­signed to fos­ter the resur­gence of sports with­in schools across T&T. The ini­tia­tive fur­ther aims to cul­ti­vate a cul­ture of greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion by ed­u­cat­ing stu­dents, par­ents, ed­u­ca­tors and the wider so­ci­ety on the sig­nif­i­cance of sports for holis­tic de­vel­op­ment.

At the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, Cud­joe-Lewis and her of­fi­cials at the min­istry and the sports com­pa­ny, have since or­dered re­fur­bish­ment work to sta­dia across the coun­try for use at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el.

Cud­joe-Lewis said: "My job is not to run, to catch, to kick or to throw, but to lis­ten and di­rect the min­istry and the unit un­der my watch to tru­ly lis­ten to the sports fra­ter­ni­ty and pro­vide the as­sis­tance need­ed and the sup­port need­ed in pro­mot­ing gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, and I think we have come a long way in de­vel­op­ing pol­i­cy in reach­ing our goals and ac­com­plish­ing gov­ern­ment's man­date from the sports pol­i­cy of 2017 - the na­tion­al re­wards and in­cen­tive frame­work where we are now able to give fund­ing when our ath­letes win medals."