But for Laura Pierre-Escayg and her husband Francis Escayg, that challenge was a launching pad for an organisation to help educate the nation about people with disabilities.

The two are founders of the non-profit organisation Cause An Effect which is a “for-purpose, media and marketing company, with a focus to create awareness campaigns about disabilities and persons with special needs, to transform perspectives and create an inclusive society.” Pierre-Escayg, a singer/songwriter by profession, told Sunday Newsday when in 2004 the couple’s first child Isaiah was born, he was severely disabled and had a rare gene disorder, incontentia pigmenti, which resulted in all round developmental delays.

In September 2009, Pierre-Escayg and occupational therapist Sara Stephens formed the NGO Caribbean Kids and Family Therapy Organisation which provides occupational therapy services for children with special needs regardless of ability to pay. Her husband was also on the board. Then Pierre-Escayg got pregnant with her second child, a girl Phoenix, and she decided to walk away from the organisation and allow someone else to take it over.

She recalled her husband, a filmmaker, musician and author, was concerned about what would happen to their son if he died. Their paediatrician also asked them what they would do with Isaiah when he turned 18, a question they had not considered while going through the daily grind of taking care of him and attending to his needs.

“When the question came up with Isaiah it sparked something in my husband. The need to do something to shift the future, not just for Isaiah but other kids like Isaiah.” Escayg decided to form Cause An Effect and it was founded December 19, 2012.

Pierre-Escayg said she was a little hesitant at first to get involved adding, that as a parent of a child with a disability, it can be draining and rewarding.

“I felt I wanted to be a little bit selfish. I did not want to save the world anymore. I wanted to live, enjoy my children, get back to my music career. I just wanted to sing again and not want to think about anything else really.” When her son broke his leg, she began going through a very difficult period with him that included a lot of sleepless nights. She explained many children with special needs have very erratic sleep patterns and, because he is a child that cannot remain unsupervised, she would be up all night with him sometimes and that could go on for two days.

Pierre-Escayg recalled thinking if she was having struggles, then others would be going through struggles as well. Spurred on by empathy, she began thinking what she could to help and alleviate their situations and in 2015 began “throwing” herself into Cause An Effect with her husband.

She said at that point the organisation was not “complete” and the two started working together. She explained a lot of what they are developing in Cause An Effect is about building bridges between the public, those don’t have disabilities, and those who have disabilities.

She said the disabled are often looked upon as subhuman and people to feel pity and sympathy for but it should not be like that.

“You could become disabled today.

An accident happens. Or give birth to a child with a disability.

You could become elderly and get dementia. Or a mental health issue prevents you from living a full life and to be independent.” Escayg told Sunday Newsday his role is to be in the background creating content.

“As a team we work pretty well.

She holds down the frontline while I am in the background getting ammunition.” Isaiah turns 13 next month while their daughter Phoenix is eight and a third child, a girl named Roxy- Moon, is six. Escayg said they are working on a feature film on their family which will focus on how they had to deal with the stresses Isaiah brought and also the expectations and loss of expectations of having a child with a disability.

They are planning to release the film in 2018.

“We want persons with disabilities to no longer be invisible. We want them to be treated as equal persons.” Pierre-Escayg explained they also work with NGOS to help develop their stories for them and to develop content relative to disabilities.

Cause An Effect has produced the “Lioness” series for print media about 12 women including mothers of children with disabilities, women who run NGOs or schools, and one young woman, Shamla Maharaj, who has cerebral palsy.

Pierre-Escayg said it was a pretty successful series based on the feedback they received.

They then published the “Footsoldier” series about 12 women including special educators, speech therapists and occupational therapists.

Pierre-Escayg explained for every series, they wanted to humanise the person with a disability and had the women pen the stories themselves.

The Footsoldier recently ended and they are working on two new series: the Lions Series for print featuring 12 fathers and men who live with disabilities, and for television the ABCs of Disabilities which brings together a diverse team of paediatricians, medical specialists, parents, self advocates, therapists, mental health professionals and gerontologists – to share their expertise on disabilities Cause An Effect will be holding a fundraiser concert at Queen’s Hall on September 24, Republic Day, to offset the cost of producing the ABCs of Disabilities campaign.

The concert will feature Pierre-Escayg and calypsonian David Rudder and tickets cost $200. For more information on the concert or the organisation check out their website causeaneffect.co or check them out on Facebook.

CLF wasn’t established overnight. “Founded as an insurance company, Colonial Life Insurance Company (Clico), by Cyril Duprey, it was expanded into a diversified company by his nephew Lawrence Duprey.

CL Financial then became one of the largest local conglomerates in the region, encompassing over 65 companies in 32 countries worldwide with total assets exceeding US$100 billion.” Has the Government and public sector inefficiency the ability to re-establish or surpass CLF’s accomplishments? How many companies will the Government replace CLF with? The Government can’t run Petrotrin, TSTT , nor HDC right.

What will be the global scope of CLF’s replacement companies if that is Government’s plan? When will those companies roll out and become profitable? If the Government isn’t going to succeed CLF with something superior, what is its motive in now seeking to dump CLF on the open market after eight years? Is CLF now no longer too big to fail, or was it set up in 2009 to appear as if failing? OK, sell CL Financial. Then what? The Government must lay out the plan for what it intends doing if it succeeds in selling off CLF. Lay out what the nation should look forward to after that is done. Present the future visionary plan. How much money would a CLF fire sale put in the Government’s hands. What would the Government do with the money? Spend it on another overpriced white cow cricket complex or some more tall buildings? If it got the best price, say, $30 billion with interest at four percent, would the Government use the cash to write off $31.2 billion of the $124 billion national debt? What’s the move after that? What would the Government to do generate forex? Lay out the benefits for future generations.

The Government has no income- earning ideas. It has no plan for diversifying away from mining and selling the nation’s non-renewable raw energy cheap. Thus it has no diversified portfolio for earning the country income. It hasn’t learned how to do this from eight years of running Clico because it replaced the brains that know how to earn diversified income with bureaucratic lackeys.

Historically, governments have always sought to sell State assets to make up shortfalls in Budget allocations. This is a new page in which the Government may have surreptitiously gotten control of a multibillion dollar private company and is now unrolling its motive for doing so. The Government saw CLF as short-term financial insurance against prolonged low energy prices.

The pattern of governments throughout has been to buy things for more than they’re worth and sell them for less than they’re worth. That business system is why TT is $124 billion in debt. Some examples are the controversial $240 million Caroni Racing Complex in which Johnny O’Halloran had been involved in the 1970s, the $1.2 billion Lara Cricket Complex of the 2000s, the failed $2 billion Petrotrin gas-to-liquids plant of the 2000s.

So usurping control of CLF in 2009 under the pretence of seeking to save the conglomerate with tax dollars and now seeking legal backing to sell CLF for small change, to preferred buyers, is Government’s ballpark business lineament.

B JOSEPH via email

In a time when heroes and role models are desperately needed, we must encourage such diligent young people to continue to inspire the nation.

We need to stop holding back on rewarding this young man and give him his well deserved dues, just as other people have gotten in the past.

I join with the nation in congratulating Stewart on a job well done and he can rest assured that the entire country is proud of him.

Well done, sir.

CHOY FELIX Longdenville

In that incident in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a police officer fatally shot an Australian woman, Justine Damond, who had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault near her home. Damond was shot by the officer in the passenger seat through the open window on the driver’s side, as she conversed with the driver.

According to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension which is investigating the incident, “Both officers were wearing body cameras, but the cameras were not turned on until after the shooting… The squad car camera also was not turned on.” Damond’s death is not the first controversial police shooting involving an officer who wore a body camera but failed to capture the critical footage. In a high-profile case, one of the Charlotte (North Carolina) police officers who fatally shot Keith Scott there last year failed to activate his body camera as soon as he responded to the situation, violating departmental policy.

Which begs the question: does the TT PS have an official policy on the use of body cameras by police officers? On the positive side, many police shootings have indeed been captured by body cameras. There is no doubt they can be useful but they have to be turned on. I can already hear a rogue officer saying he turned it off to go to the bathroom and forgot to turn it back on, hence the reason his questionable behaviour was not captured by his body camera.

In an interesting aftermath to the Damond incident, Minneapolis Police Chief Janee Harteau resigned less than a week after Damond was shot. Mayor Betsy Hodges said she asked Harteau to resign because “I’ve lost confidence in the chief ’s ability to lead us further — and from the many conversations I’ve had with people around our city, especially this week, it is clear that she has lost the confidence of the people of Minneapolis as well.” Any chance that something similar could ever happen in TT ?

NOEL KALICHARAN via email

Short and sweet, like the run of the festival itself, was the Picoplat Young Artist Collective’s abridged production of Mozart’s timeless opera, The Magic Flute, which made a four-show run during the group’s occupancy at the newly-opened Government Campus Plaza in Port of Spain.

Last year’s Tales of Hoffmann was a hit with its large cast, layered storyline and a plot than ran for close to three hours.

With The Magic Flute, however, quite a number of liberties were taken with the music and the spoken dialogue, not for the sake of being picky but for simplification and brevity. In its unaltered state, the opera runs for a total of three hours with bits that could be considered just a tad heavy according to Picoplat artistic director and Queen of the Night, soprano Natalia Dopwell.

Mozart, a fervent member of the Freemasonic Lodge, wove concepts related to the group’s principles into the plot and these are championed by the story’s heroes. In this version, merely a skeleton of these elements as blatant references to the Masons still remains, perhaps only detectable by those who are familiar with the original work.

This year’s version – a revival of the, also abridged, staging of the opera in 2013 – restored some of the original material and a couple of the missing characters.

Although there were some bits that still didn’t make it off the cutting room floor, we were left with a neatly- tailored rendering of Mozart’s–and perhaps the world’s–favourite opera in a production whose magic was not snuffed out by its brevity.

Minimal staging was complemented by a series of paintings interspersed with looped animated sequences as backdrops. Margaret Sheppard’s costumes provided an eclectic canvas of cultures from character to character, with Pamina channelling a young Cleopatra to Papageno’s costume evoking the period during which the opera was written.

Eschewing the overture, musical director June Nathaniel took us right into the action, which begins as Tamino, the prince, is being chased through the forest by a fierce dragon.

Rory Wallace’s solid tenor rang through the auditorium as he manoeuvred away from the creature, played by choreographer Triston Wallace in a costume that evoked the dragon- like characters seen on J’Ouvert morning.

Rory Wallace, a Ball State University doctoral candidate in music, portrayed the prince as a gallant and youthful monarch as he trumpeted much of his lines with the gusto of a classic TV hero.

UTT Academy of the Performing Arts student Jason Lawrence was Papageno, the Queen’s love-starved birdcatcher and much of the opera’s comic relief. With some tentative movements on stage, Lawrence’s approach to the character was not the conventional class-clown rendering seen by others who’ve played the role. Rather, he shone in moments of comic timing. Some of them, created by the updating of the script.

Lawrence delivered a crisp baritone that never faltered and did a good job of holding its own in the ensemble pieces.

Spoiler alert: Papageno does find his mate as he is joined by soprano Annelise Kelly as Papagena–go figure–in a sweet and spirited performance of the popular duet toward the end of the opera.

The Three Ladies, emissaries to the Queen, were flawlessly played by sopranos Shannon Navarro and Sabrina Marks and mezzo-soprano Maegan Pollonais. Cunning yet charming, the trio–who often moved as one devious unit– maintained a seamless dialogue as they slunk across the stage in villainous glee. Navarro, a graduate of the Central School of Speech and Drama in Musical Theatre; Marks, a longtime student of June Nathaniel’s Key Academy of Music who has starred in a number of Picoplat productions and Pollonais, a doctoral candidate in music at Ball State University, each moved with a devilish enjoyment of their own.

Pamina, the imprisoned princess fated to fall for Tamino was played by recent UTT Artist Diploma graduate, soprano Tamika- Diandra Lewis, who brought both a tenderness and a tenacity to the character. Lewis’ measured choices reflected a contemplative process as she channelled palpable sadness during her aria in the second half.

Tenor Richard Taylor as the vile Monostatos, who held Pamina captive and lusted after the young princess did a good job as the calculating and mischievous character.

The youth were well represented in Denique Robertson, Clarice Beeput and Misty-Ann Knights who played the trio of spirit guides who led some of the wandering characters on the right path at various points in the plot. Their angelic voices blended in harmony as they seemed to always appear at just the right time in contrast to the Three Ladies who, more often than not, were up to no good.

The music of The Magic Flute is known for including some of the highest and lowest notes in the soprano and bass repertoire, respectively. The role of the wicked Queen of the Night soars up into the stratosphere and calls for an arrow-like precision while the role of good and wise Sarastro demands that the singer delves into the gravelly depths of his instrument. This could make casting a challenge but, with our proud pool of local operatic talent, Picoplat made it happen.

Natalia Dopwell, as the Queen, appeared on stage as a force of energy, rendering the role with all the requisite rage of a villain and the grace of a monarch to temper it. Shellon Antoine as Sarastro, antithesis to the Queen, was a serene presence whose arias– unlike the fast-paced, agitated rhythms of the Queen’s pieces–offer a reverent, hymn-like calm. Antoine’s rumbling bass caressed the lowest notes of his pieces with graceful ease and clarity.

Director Dr Helmer Hilwig instructed the cast in this interpretation of the classic work. June Nathaniel led a guest team of top-tier accompanists– pianist, Byron Burford-Phearse; flautist, Martina Chow and Demika Lawrence on the timpani and glockenspiel.

The choral pieces were performed by the singers of the Young Artist Collective, many of whom were soloists in dual roles as choristers.

And, as a reward for their accomplishments, they will each be joined by a parent/family member to head to Spain, on August 22 and 23, for a two-day training camp with coaches of the famed FC Barcelona club.

The children were assessed in three skill sets – dribbling, short passing and control.

But it was the 12-year-old Gilbert, supported by a group of his family members, who was the undisputed winner, as he tallied 265 points, with the 10-year-old Lamsee next on 245.

Paponette and Aalon Wilson- Wright were joint third with 230 and a sudden-death tie-break (with each player attempting to hit the crossbar from the penalty spot) required to determine the last person on the trip to Spain.

After two unsuccessful tries, Paponette struck the bar while Wilson- Wright was unable to hit the target with his third attempt.

Completing the top 10 were Aydon Caruth, Ramone Sawh, Kassidy Davidson (225 each), Anton Joseph (220), Dante Moses (215) and Shaheim O’Brian (210).

Reflecting on his win, Gilbert pointed out, “It’s exceptional. I can’t wait to get there.” He admitted, “It wasn’t as hard as I expected. I was focused on what I had to do. I had a mission (set out).” About his forthcoming trip, Gilbert said, “I hope to get the respect of the coaches and the great experience that is to come.” Ex-England defender and former San Juan Jabloteh and Central FC coach, Terry Fenwick, was the main coach of this month-long exercise.

“I think it was a wonderful initiative,” he said. “It brought kids out from all around Trinidad and Tobago. Its got the kids practicing skills sets that are all important for their future in football.” Fenwick continued, “In that respect, it makes it very transparent.

It’s not about the coaches’ selections, it’s about what the kids score.

So they turn up, they do their stuff, the exercises that they’ve not necessarily done before.

“But these are exercises that are done all over Europe now, all the bigger clubs in Europe, at these development age groups. So I’m delighted with how this went.” Fenwick called on the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) to implement such initiatives into their development programmes.

Looking ahead to the future, Fenwick noted, “I think we’ve got some outstanding young kids. My personal view is that (those) youngsters that we’ve got are let down by the coaching methods that we’re still using here in Trinidad.” This event is part of a four-year agreement between Nestle Milo and FC Barcelona, which is based on a shared vision to promote healthier lifestyles through physical activity among children, especially during their foundation years, seven to 12 years old.

According to police reports at about 5.35am on Saturday morning, Sgt Santlal of the St. Mary’s Police Post was told the body of a man was seen lying on the road at Samuel Cooper Road. He and other police went to the scene where the body was later identified as that of Brian Warren of Fifth Company in Moruga .

The body bore several gunshots wounds. Warren was dressed in his Allied Security Services uniform.

ASPs Ali and Mohammed and Insp Persad along with members of the Homicide Bureau also visited the scene.

No motive for the killing has been established so far. A post mortem is expected to be done tomorrow at the Forensic Sciences Centre. When Sunday Newsday visited Warren’s home yesterday, a male relative said he was known throughout the village as “Happy” and was well liked.

“Happy was good. He was not a bad person or a bad boy,” the distraught man said.

He recalled having seen Warren on Friday evening when he (Warren) had informed him that a group of people from the community had organised a lime and he would provide them with electricity from his house for the music speaker boxes. Warren was not married and lived alone.

Asked whether Warren had ever expressed concerns about threats to his life, the relative shook his head vigorously saying “no, no, nothing, no.”

I had my used phone posted to me which I had forgotten in London. It was sent on June 10 and arrived on June 16. However, I got the slip for collection on July 17, a whole month later.

I had to hire a taxi to take me to New Grant to collect the phone, even though I am staying in Princes Town.

When I got there on July 20 I was told I was lucky I came that day as it was the last day for collection. On top of that I was charged $140 to get the phone.

What is my country coming to? Too backward! Not impressed at all.

STEPHANIE MASON via email

Through an initiative led by Tony Lee and I95.5FM, in conjunction with the Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA), the event has been organised to demonstrate the possibilities of achievement through sport.

It is hoped that by allowing the youngsters of the Laventille community to mix and play the game with some of these legends will empower them to follow in similar paths and take lifelong memories forward with them. Laventille has a representative team, Miscellaneous Laventille United that will campaign in the Northern Football Association Premier Division this year.

It is the 10th event in a series which began following the murders of two students some years ago and there have been several parts in a series entitled “Laventille Nights” which has seen appearances made by a number of notable names, including Olympic sprint medallist Ato Boldon and Russell Latapy, former national football captain and coach Russell Latapy.

Cafu, on his second visit to TT after being here in 2007, will take the field alongside former Portugal international and Athletico Madrid midfielder Maniche as FIFA legends, teaming up with former Jamaican internationals Ian Goodison, Gregory Messam, Ricardo Gardner and ex-Grenada player Jason Roberts.

Former TT internationals – current head coach Dennis Lawrence, Latapy, Brent Sancho, Cyd Gray, Stern John, Carlos Edwards, Dale Saunders and others will put on their boots for the exhibition match against a Laventille representative team.

Cafu has collection of medals from three different FIFA World Cup Finals – 1994, 1998 and 2002 – which is the envy of every other player who has participated in football’s greatest tournament.

Thomas, 34, of Lackpat Road, El Dorado, was walking along Pentecostal Road at about 9.15 pm on Thursday when he was approached by two men, one of whom shot at him.

Police said Thomas tried to escape his assailants but fell in a drain at the side of the road.

One of the men jumped onto his head and chest, trampling on him repeatedly. Both men ran off after leaving Thomas motionless in the drain.

The incident was captured on CCTV cameras and the footage was viewed by members of the Tunapuna Police Station.

Thomas was hospitalised in critical condition after the attack.

A suspect was held yesterday at a house in Sea Lots.

Meanwhile, police are investigating the shooting death of a 30-year-old man in Petit Bourg early yesterday morning.

Police said Kerlon Dorset, 30, of Francis Avenue was liming with friends at Upper Irving Road Extension when, at about 2 am, he and three others decided to go home as it was raining.

Reports are that Dorset got into the back seat of car and it pulled off. However, a short while later, a gunman shot at the vehicle.

Dorset told his friends he had been shot and they took him to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, where he died.