T&T, US explore joint sport and youth programmes

Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States are ex­plor­ing clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion in sports diplo­ma­cy, youth de­vel­op­ment and sport tourism fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Phillip Watts and Unit­ed States Chargé d’Af­faires Philip Kern.

Kern, ac­com­pa­nied by US Em­bassy Pub­lic Af­fairs Of­fi­cer An­drea Stan­ford, paid a cour­tesy vis­it to Watts at the A.N.R. Robin­son Diplo­mat­ic Lounge at Par­lia­ment, Port of Spain.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs Pene­lope Brad­shaw-Niles al­so at­tend­ed the meet­ing.

Dis­cus­sions fo­cused on op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion aimed at us­ing sport to strength­en peo­ple-to-peo­ple ties while cre­at­ing greater de­vel­op­men­tal op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple and sup­port­ing the growth of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sport sec­tor.

The par­ties al­so dis­cussed pos­si­ble ini­tia­tives to ex­pose lo­cal ath­letes, coach­es, sports ad­min­is­tra­tors and young peo­ple to in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices, ex­change pro­grammes and ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Watts wel­comed the en­gage­ment, say­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships could sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of ath­letes and young peo­ple while con­tribut­ing to the na­tion­al agen­da for sport, youth em­pow­er­ment and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty through sport tourism.

The min­istry and US rep­re­sen­ta­tives al­so ex­pressed a will­ing­ness to work to­wards es­tab­lish­ing a joint com­mit­tee.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the pro­posed com­mit­tee would work with both sides to iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ty ar­eas, de­vel­op prac­ti­cal pro­grammes and sup­port the im­ple­men­ta­tion of ini­tia­tives fo­cused on ath­lete de­vel­op­ment, youth em­pow­er­ment and op­por­tu­ni­ties in sport tourism.

The pro­posed col­lab­o­ra­tion comes as the gov­ern­ment seeks to ex­pand op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple through sport while de­vel­op­ing the sec­tor as an av­enue for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

The min­istry said it looks for­ward to con­tin­ued en­gage­ment with the US Em­bassy as both sides pur­sue ini­tia­tives in sport and youth de­vel­op­ment.

It said the pro­posed part­ner­ship is in­tend­ed to har­ness sport and youth de­vel­op­ment to build stronger com­mu­ni­ties while deep­en­ing bi­lat­er­al co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States.