Dear Editor: Gov’t must support community groups helping boys like Zwade

“[…] The government must do more than offer condolences. It must fund, support, and scale the grassroots programmes already working.

“It must empower community leaders like Uncle Keron, coaches like Wayne Sheppard, and academies like Arima Araucans and Trendsetter Hawks who are giving these boys structure, purpose, and belief.

“These are the people standing between a child and a coffin. Their work should be funded like national security—because that’s what it is…”

The following Letter to the Editor on how the government can avoid tragedies like the murder of 17-year-old Arima North Secondary school footballer Zwade Alleyne was submitted to Wired868 by ‘Betterment’:

Seventeen-year-old Zwade Alleyne should have been revising for his CSEC exams. He should have been training for his next football match or mentoring a younger player at his community club.

Instead, his life came to an end on a hospital bed—his body pierced by a 9mm bullet, his dreams dangling on the edge of uncertainty.

Zwade was not a gang member. He was not part of the violent machinery that too often claims the lives of Trinidad and Tobago’s youth. He was a footballer, a student, a dreamer.

Yet on a quiet Saturday evening, while liming with friends outside his apartment at Building 12 in Maloney, Zwade was shot in the head. A stray target in what appears to be yet another turf war between rival gangs. A child caught in a conflict that he never signed up for.

There is something profoundly wrong with a society in which a teenager, whose name should be making headlines for goals scored or scholarships earned, instead becomes the face of a national tragedy. But this is not an isolated case.

Just last month, Zwade’s former Arima North teammate Ezekiel Ramdialsingh was gunned down in La Horquetta. In September, another young footballer, Jayden ‘Mr Smooth’ Moore, was murdered during a robbery.

And just this month, a Coast Guard officer and former footballer from Maloney, Dacian John, met a similar fate.

This is a pattern. This is our crisis.

Five years ago, Zwade was preparing for a life-changing opportunity—a tour to the US to represent Trinidad and Tobago at the prestigious Dallas Cup with Trendsetter Hawks Football Academy. He was one of only five guest players selected.

For a boy from Maloney, this was more than a football trip. It was a window into a different life. A life with possibilities. But then Covid-19 hit. The tour was cancelled. The door to opportunity slammed shut.

We can’t help but wonder: What if that tour had happened? What if Zwade had gotten just a glimpse of that different world? Could it have shifted the trajectory of his life?

And yet, should one football tour be the only hope for a child’s escape? Should dreams hinge on chance invitations and one-off events?

The reality is that too many of our young men and women in at-risk communities like Maloney, La Horquetta, Laventille, and Beetham are dangling between promise and peril, with precious few lifelines being thrown their way.

Uncle Keron, just 32 years old, is trying to be that lifeline. Through prayer walks, youth engagement, and football, he is battling for the soul of his community. But he cannot do it alone. Nor should he have to.

The government must do more than offer condolences. It must fund, support, and scale the grassroots programmes already working.

It must empower community leaders like Uncle Keron, coaches like Wayne Sheppard, and academies like Arima Araucans and Trendsetter Hawks who are giving these boys structure, purpose, and belief.

These are the people standing between a child and a coffin. Their work should be funded like national security—because that’s what it is.

We are facing our own pandemic. Not of viruses, but of violence. Not of disease, but of despair.

And unlike Covid-19, this one does not discriminate by health or hygiene. It preys on poverty, on neglect, on hopelessness.

We should not wait for another bullet to realize that the lives of our children matter—not only when they’re taken, but while they’re still alive, dreaming, growing, and playing.

We must act now—not just with prayers, but with policy. Not just with tears, but with tenacity. Because we cannot continue burying our future and calling it fate.

Zwade deserved better. And so do the thousands like him still out there, still waiting for their Dallas Cup, their scholarship, their shot—not at death, but at life.

Let this be the last time we say: “What could have been.”

• (Video by Uncle Keron Youth Empowerment Movement.)

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