Sport and Community Development in St Vincent and the Grenadines
St Vincent and the Grenadines has been, for the past several decades, driven apart by strife of one sort or another. Every day we are exposed to complaints of the extent to which we have drawn apart, even within families and neighbourhoods.
Divisiveness amongst peoples of any nation bodes no good.
When we reflect on the extent to which St Vincent and the Grenadines has become a bitterly divided nation, especially over the past 25 years, we can begin to understand why the aspiration of a unified Caribbean seems fanciful.
One of the challenges facing us in St Vincent and the Grenadines is our failure to more systematically facilitate meaningful dialogue amongst our people about who we are, what we have become and why, as well as what we can do to effect meaningful change that will allow us to grow and genuinely develop our nation and its people.
The suggestion of this Column is that sport offers us an excellent opportunity to re-shape St Vincent and the Grenadines and become a model nation within the Caribbean.
Sport
This Column uses the concept of sport to include all forms of physical activity or movement.
We have long advocated, in this Column, the urgent need for us as a nation to insist upon the addition of physical literacy alongside numeracy and literacy, as the most important fundamentals of education for life.
Physical literacy
We know that unless born with some defect, everyone engages in movement from birth. However, while we consciously teach children to speak and count, we encourage them to move through to the stage where they can walk but do not consider the systematic teaching of coordinated movement. Instead, we seem to think that coordinated movement comes naturally to children. That is, until we discover that they have difficulty trying to march with other students in a parade or are unable to perform specific skills that require coordination of the limbs.
It is an unfortunate reality that our culture has taught us to quickly laugh the uncoordinated child to scorn, leaving them to watch their coordinated peers perform well in sporting activities. Little thought is given to the mental consequences of children of our jeering at them for their lack of coordination.
We pay little attention to the increasing number of children whose parents, themselves having been the recipients of scorn for their own lack of coordination, readily prepare written submissions to principals and PE Teachers seeking their children’s exemption from physical exercises at school.
We would do well to adopt an official policy of locating physical literacy as an essential part of early childhood education, beginning in the home with parents. Such an approach will be of immense benefit to pregnant mothers and continue with them and their newborns following the latter’s birth.
Pregnant mothers ten to speak with each other during their pregnancies and this offers an excellent opportunity for discussions on the importance of physical literacy and the immeasurable benefits of physical activity. This can be done in the neighbourhoods in which we live and facilitate the beginning of change in our communities.
It is unfortunate that we seem to believe that part of the process of development is isolating ourselves from our neighbours. We hasten to construct walls and other types of barriers between ourselves and our neighbours, as if to show that we are different and not eager to mix or share ourselves with each other.
While it is true that we have robberies in communities around us, we do not take time to reflect on who are the culprits, from where they actually emanate and why have they emerged and targeted the respective communities.
Physical activity
It has become fashionable to claim that the ‘the family that prays together stays together’. There is as much truth in the claim that ‘the community that exercises and plays together, stays together’.
In the face of a growth in crime, communities have rushed to establish ‘Neighbourhood Watches’. The intention is to facilitate a sense of shared responsibility for the protection of the entire community, rather than having individuals reliant on their own means of protection. Unfortunately, few of those who form neighbourhood watches transcend the narrow understanding of their collective action in the sphere of collective safety. They do not move beyond this aspect of their respective communities and hence they fail to grow closer to each other.
During the COVID 19 pandemic, this country witnessed a spontaneous gravitation to physical exercise, driven in large measure by their fear of an untimely death. People suddenly responded to international claims of the benefits of physical exercise relative to being a victim of the dreaded pandemic. However, many had taken to exercising together. Some even car-pooled to go to the exercise venue. They exercised as groups, communicated regularly on setting dates and courses and communicated, in each exercise session, about matters impacting each other and Vincentian society. Unfortunately, once COVID 19 appeared to have been brought under control, life went back to normal and the sense of community ended, almost without discussion amongst the former exercise partners. The impact on regularity of communications and the range of topics discussed also came to a noticeable halt. It is a sad reality that only a few groupings have remained together, still engaging in physical activity and sitting around afterwards to discuss a range of issues they consider pertinent.
A cursory review of the increase in group and community engagement in joint physical activity came almost naturally to many Vincentians at a time of concern over one’s health. Little attention was paid by those in authority of the positive impact that emerged in St Vincent and the Grenadines as a result of the fear of an expansion of COVID 19 and its consequences for life. Not surprisingly, the authorities never took advantage of the positives to promote community development across our nation.
Vincentians of all walks of life shared themselves, their fears and hopes with each other in a manner that they were not conscious of. They did not take time to analyse the benefits that they all realised from their collective drift towards physical activity as essential to their sustained livelihood and reliance on each other.
Time should however be taken, even in hindsight, to revisit our people’s reaction to COVID 19 and use the findings to deliberately build on the positives to create more harmonious communities across St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Recreational activities
Children enjoy play. We once thought it possible to play in any available open space, including the yards around homes and schools. Such play was encouraged by some parents, not all. The venues were always busy. Suddenly, all of this has changed.
Television, social media and a host of other developments appear to have served to distract our children and their parents enough for them to engage in less exercise and the practice of sport in every open space.
Traditional outdoor games have disappeared, for the most part, making way for the cell phone that has not become a sort of physical attachment to most individuals, regardless of age. Suddenly, every ‘ping’ assumes greater importance that the communitarian impact of merely being together, engaged in some sport or play or recreation.
Parents and their children find little time to communicate with each other. Children and adults are being socialised today, more by what is offered on the cell phone than by their parents.
Many parents are today totally unaware of the content to which their children are exposed and to which they are responsive.
Children play areas that have been put in place are left to ruin as interest in recreational activities wane amongst our Vincentian population. Suddenly, everyone is too taken up with just about everything else than the building and sustainability of our communities.
Sport and Community Development
We are today making an appeal for St Vincent and the Grenadines to create a deliberate strategy of a deliberate linking of sport with community development.
Vincentians love sport. But this love must not be left only to those considered coordinated enough to make teams and clubs that engage in competitions.
Given the importance of physical literacy and physical activity we could have sessions aimed at facilitating coordination amongst all of our people as a nation. Let us commit to the development of a physically coordinated nation.
We can build strong, healthy, coordinated communities, everywhere, regardless of the size of the different populations in each. Small, medium or large, we can grow together, physically, confident that we will develop discipline, share ideas and work together to achieve better communities.
We ought not to wait on government to build wholesome communities. They should be responsive to the initiatives of the members of our communities.
We must return to having fun together, looking at the growth and development of each other, or children and families, critical components of our communities.
Pride must be a fundamental input and outcome of our efforts to utilise the values attendant to sport – discipline, respect, sharing, caring, health, mental well-being – to embolden our communities, and ultimately, make St Vincent and the Grenadines, an example to the Caribbean and ultimately, to the world. This is the same pride that we need to instil in our sportspeople as well as our students and farmers. Every Vincentian can and must be touched and imbued with this national pride.
Our families must believe in themselves that they can build the communities in which they are located and positively impact their neighbouring ones.
A country may have significant resources that enrich their treasuries but lack the pride that communities generate for their own survival. Small as we are, there is an approach that allows us to become exemplary.
The time to begin, even with one small step, is now with us. Seize the moment!
