Young businessman backs child welfare with $100,000 intervention

A young busi­ness­man is step­ping in­to the child wel­fare space with a $100,000 in­ter­ven­tion, high­light­ing grow­ing calls for pri­vate-sec­tor ac­tion as Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to grap­ple with per­sis­tent gaps in its child pro­tec­tion sys­tem.

En­tre­pre­neur Ri­az Bha­ga­loo, own­er of Arazzi Restau­rant on Mar­aval Road, has dis­trib­uted the funds be­tween two grass­roots or­gan­i­sa­tions, Rapid Fire and Bridge of Hope Or­phan­age, both of which pro­vide care and sup­port for vul­ner­a­ble chil­dren.

The do­na­tion, made in 2025, comes against the back­drop of mount­ing pres­sure on the na­tion­al child pro­tec­tion frame­work, with da­ta from the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty show­ing more than 400 re­ports of child abuse be­ing made on av­er­age each month in re­cent years. Child ne­glect re­mains the most fre­quent­ly re­port­ed is­sue, un­der­scor­ing on­go­ing so­cial and in­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges.

Bha­ga­loo framed the con­tri­bu­tion as part of a broad­er push to ad­dress those gaps through di­rect in­ter­ven­tion. “This is not a char­i­ty for op­tics. This is about build­ing a pipeline of op­por­tu­ni­ty for chil­dren who oth­er­wise fall through the cracks,” he said.

The two ben­e­fi­cia­ry or­gan­i­sa­tions, led by Subesh Ram­jat­tan and Kevin Rati­ram, have been op­er­at­ing at the com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, pro­vid­ing shel­ter, su­per­vi­sion and de­vel­op­men­tal sup­port for chil­dren in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. The fund­ing is ex­pect­ed to as­sist in ex­pand­ing those ser­vices at a time when de­mand con­tin­ues to out­pace avail­able re­sources.

The move al­so re­flects a wider shift to­wards youth-led phil­an­thropy, with younger busi­ness fig­ures in­creas­ing­ly tak­ing on roles tra­di­tion­al­ly left to state agen­cies and large in­sti­tu­tions.

While the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to im­ple­ment re­forms with­in the child pro­tec­tion sys­tem, con­cerns have been raised about re­sponse times, over­sight and the ca­pac­i­ty of chil­dren’s homes. The vol­ume of re­port­ed cas­es has re­mained con­sis­tent­ly high, point­ing to struc­tur­al is­sues that ex­tend be­yond in­sti­tu­tion­al reach.

Bha­ga­loo said the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ad­dress­ing those is­sues must be shared. “Com­mu­ni­ty so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty re­quires more than con­ver­sa­tion. It re­quires ac­tion,” he said, adding that pri­vate cit­i­zens and busi­ness lead­ers have a role to play in sup­port­ing vul­ner­a­ble groups.

He is al­so ex­pect­ed to host a pri­vate lun­cheon lat­er this year for both or­gan­i­sa­tions as part of con­tin­ued en­gage­ment.

The in­ter­ven­tion adds to the on­go­ing de­bate about the role of non-state ac­tors in so­cial de­vel­op­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly as de­mand for ser­vices con­tin­ues to grow. With hun­dreds of cas­es re­port­ed month­ly and lim­it­ed re­sources stretched across the sys­tem, ini­tia­tives like this are in­creas­ing­ly be­ing viewed as nec­es­sary sup­port mech­a­nisms rather than op­tion­al char­i­ty.