SPORT AND COMMUNITY RECONSTRUCTION IN SVG
Over the past several years we have witnessed a global shift from sport development per se, to add sport for development.
In many respects the concept of sport for development ia an acknowledgement, globally, of the long-persistent failure of the leadership of nations to acknowledge the critically important role that sport can and must play in the development of their respective societies.
The reality is that historically sport was a pastime of the upper and upper middle classes in society. There was little interest in encouraging and engaging the other classes, lowly as they were, to be part of the pastime.
Few have taken the time to review history long enough to understand the grave injustices attendant to colonisation and what we have often been taught as the growth and development of civilisation.
More often than not, what we were taught as the birth of civilisation was coloured by the storyteller, usually and perhaps more appropriately described as the conqueror/coloniser.
We are living in troubled times, today, where history is being re-written by a new generation/breed of coloniser that threatens to be abysmally revisionist, lying through the use of modern technology centuries and decades after their original versions have been debunked.
It is an unfortunate truism that many of our Caribbean nations have been so chronically exploited through captivity, slavery and colonisation that we have accepted mimicry of the exploiter classes as the primary option for survival. Unlike the Haitians, the rest of us in the Caribbean were more interested in our survival than protecting future generations.
We are still paying the price.
What could have been
Some years ago Team Athletics joined member federations of World Athletics in a new programme that was put on the table of international athletics. Fir four consecutive years, each of the designation national governing body for the sport of athletics receied an annual special Grant of $215,000USD.
TASVG designated the grant to the procurement of equipment for those interested in the sport around the nation. Zones were created and the initial agreement was that the equipment would be handed over to the National Sports Council (NSC) for the realisation of the long-proposed Community Sport Councils.
National sports federations were to be brought on board, using the same zones identified by TASVG. The idea was for each of the Community Sports Councils would be the custodians of the equipment and this woud allow for the management of the sport equipment and collaborate with the federations to plan annual calendars for the more systematic development of the respective sports.
In keeping with its commitment, TASVG officialy handed over the first stock of equipment to the then Chairman of the NSC, Mr Branch. The media covered the event. A few days later TASVG received a call indicating that the NSC could not hold its part of the equipment since the higher authorities insisted that the NSC was not supposed t take anything from TASVG.
It is not surprising therefore that after nearly 25 years in office, the previous government was unable to facilitate the development of the Area Sport Councils, the NSC and ultimately, sport itself, across the nation.
The potential for opening the door to sport as a vehicle for development in St Vincent and the Grenadines was not understood and embarrassingly rejected. The nation’s children and youth are the poorer for the lackof vision, the absence of creativity applied to sport.
Sport-loving Vincentians must ache with disgust at the immense potential that could have taken place in respect of community development through sport over the past several years.
Unfortunately, we cannot recapture ost opportunities. What we can do, however, is engage in greater anaysis of the lessons to be learnt from our past mistaken and creatively devise new approached, which, backed by greater involvement of the peoples of the nation’s communities, can take sport to their rightful place as a critical pillar of the Vincentian economy.
Sport and Community Development in SVG – the future
The most important starting point for a new approach is to return to the fundamentals – physical literact. We must use every medium to introduce peoples of all ages, from childhood to old-age, to the importance of balance and coordination – movement – in an individual’s life.
Every Vincentians must be provided with knowledge and experience of physical activity an dits lasting impact on all aspects of being fully human.
We must make Vincy Moves an integral aspect if Vincentian cultur so that we encourage healthy eating and drinking habits, make exercise an integral part of their daily routine, recreate together and share social interaction, getting to knoiw each other better and build wholesome, united communities.
Mothers must exercise during pregnancy. Parents must practice with their children at home and take them to the playing fields and grassed areas for walks and runs, throwing, catching, kicking objects, etc., developing their cooridnation skills. These early intricuctory exercises in physical literacy leads to physical activity being a way of life and an enrichment of the family doing things together.
Our eary childhood institutions must engage qualified physical education, not just anyone who once playes sport. If we believe that early childhood education is the mosyt impactful on the life of a child then that child must be exposed to well trained practitioners from then, sooner rather than later.
We have finally begun introducing physical education at the elementary school level in our system but we can do better, having appropriatey trained physical educators plying their profession at the kindergarten level.
Our engagement of the children must be at once with the family, the school, their peers and the entire community, including their religious affiliations. This a holistic approach, not piecemeal.
All national sports associations must get involved in every part of Vincentian society, facilitating a better, broad-based understanding of physical activity and sport as important life skills just as academic and technical education.
We must find creative ways to educate our children. Sport can be used to educate the child in so many different ways, inside and outside of academic subjects. This approach can help students achieve better grades, overall and strive for excellence in all aspects of life. Their confidence and discipline will grow.
Our community development oifficers must learn the value of physical literacy, physical activity, sport and a comprehensively active lifestyle.
The Community Development Department
Community develop is often promoted as everybody’s business. However, this has not been the case in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
The time has therefore come when we call upon the Community Development Department to take its rightful place in shaping Vincentian society in the current rapidly changing world of today. Community development officers have a vital role to play in the fashioning of society and we cannot afford to let this opportunity slip by without taking full advantage of the fact that there is a new government in place.
Sport brings people together. English sport clubs have been founded on communities. This is the case in much of Europe. This explains the behaviour of English club supporters when the wealthy sought to create a European football super league somne years ago. The communities merey explained to their clubs that without them there are no clubs of the stature that currently exists.
Somehow we in the Caribbean may have mistaken the foundation of English and many European clubs and the long-established structures that h ave kept them in existence. In Europe, there are very strong sport cultures that have at times withstood the vagaries of wealthy ownership.
In St Vincent and the Grenadines there is reason to believe that we can build communities through sport, using the positives of the latter to enrich and embolden the people.
Strong communities impact all aspects of life within and outside their own borders.
Conclusion
There are programmes being made available to St Vincent and the Grenadines over the next few weeks and months that will afford communities opportunities to train boys and girls, men and women, in sport leadership. Engagement of community development officers will be a major point if the reconstruction process across the nation.
We urge those responsible for the training of the leaders to be creative, open and eager to listen and learn as they to deliver the information that comes from their expertise.
We ought not to forgetthe past and its encumbrances on community and national development in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Let us move forward with a new-found spirt that is a catalyst to the diligence that brings success.
Let us be ever mindful of D Man Age’s calypso, ever so relevant…’We have a country to build; if we don’t do it, who will?’
