Trinidad Youth

Two days after I gave birth, I returned to work with both my children since then, in Trinidad, especially in television, there was no such thing as job security. I don’t regret it because my work took me to babies, children, and youth all over Trinidad, and I felt as if they somehow also became my own. When I picked up two children in a car park who had not been registered at birth or in a school, and took them home, showered them and sought schools and home for them it spoke to an old UWI statistic that claims that up to 40% of our people are functionally illiterate and many still live below the poverty line. From the little girl dying with HIV AIDS due to an absence to retroviral drugs available to pregnant mothers, the children with holes in their hearts, or the babies with distended stomachs, I was able to write with a mothers heart and a journalists intellect. A lot of our nations youth is made invisible with illiteracy, lost to drug lords acting as surrogate fathers. Our young men die too soon, either by the bullet or live in poverty as single mothers who, exploited and left out of the system, have children too early. The Children Act and the Family Court has helped, but taking care of our youth, our most vulnerable and our future is a matter of urgent national attention.