He made a life through sports, now Joseph “Reds” Perreira wants to see others save theirs via the same avenue.
Three months after starting a similar project in St Lucia, the renowned Caribbean cricket commentator believes Barbados should look at creating a daily sporting initiative catered to getting unemployed men and women off the block.
Delivering the Democratic Labour Party’s Friday lunchtime lecture, Perreira reasoned the country could only stand to benefit from such a proposal, as it would be turning the jobless into productive members of society.
“This is not a handout but a hand up, and it’s not reinventing the wheel, it’s a common sense idea to use sport to cushion the drift to crime,” said the 73-year-old sporting icon.
“If you cannot find jobs for these people, what should the society do? Should the society just draw a name for them and say ‘that’s it, we can’t employ them so let’s forget about it?’
“And it’s not about producing national stars, it’s all about producing better citizens. It’s all about giving people a chance in life [and] if the by-product of that is a national footballer, well, that is a plus. But there are good poor people in this world [because] everybody is not bad and you have to operate from that position,” he added.
A former head of the sports desk at the St Lucia-based Organization of Eastern?Caribbean States (OECS), Perreira initially pitched an idea to St Lucian volunteer body, RISE, that would see the non-governmental organization (NGO) register any interested unemployed person in a discipline during the day at various sporting facilities.
So far, RISE has already set up a successful drive at Vieux Fort, and is expected to unveil another in Castries by the start of next month.
And Perreira felt it wouldn’t be too hard an initiative to implement in Barbados, considering the rise of constituency councils and the existing infrastructure in numerous basketball courts and football fields.
“There needs to be some non-governmental organization that can run with this because governments have built basketball courts, netball courts, football fields and they lie idle from six in the morning until four in the afternoon,” said Perreira.
“You also have a core of volunteers since the 2007 World Cup, you have retired coaches, you have national associations that can provide volunteers and you can get the private sector to chip in, so everything is there.
“But this is something that whichever country adopts it, has to believe in, and has the ability to conceptualize it.
“It has got to be across party lines, it’s got to be at the grassroots level, it’s got to be at the community level because if we can win the hearts and minds of these people we might save lives.”
Perreira was in Barbados for the first cricket Test between West Indies and Australia, and was also here last year to present his autobiography, Living My Dreams, to the public library and all 22 secondary schools.
