Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment (MSCD) Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis is con­fi­dent that she has made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence dur­ing her tenure in charge of the Min­istry.

Cud­joe-Lewis took the port­fo­lio in 2018 fol­low­ing a cab­i­net reshuf­fle of the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led Peo­ples Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment. She pre­vi­ous­ly served as Min­is­ter of Tourism from 2015 af­ter she won the To­ba­go West seat in the Gen­er­al Elec­tions of that year.

"I as­sumed du­ties (as Min­is­ter of MSCD) in 2018 and I nev­er hide to tell you I am no ath­lete. I nev­er played on a na­tion­al team, nev­er even made a lit­tle com­mu­ni­ty team. But sev­en years lat­er and es­pe­cial­ly as we get ready to bring down the cur­tain on this term of this gov­ern­ment's tenure you look back (at) how your time was spent and what have you been able to con­tribute. I let plan­ning take up my time along­side the of­fi­cers of the Min­istry.

"The whole in­ten­tion, al­ways, is to cre­ate pro­grammes and projects that would touch hearts and change lives. (In ad­di­tion) the staff at the Min­istry can own them and when I walk away, they would stand the test of time and out­live me."

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch of the Sport, Health, Ath­let­ic Per­for­mance and Em­pow­er­ment (SHAPE) pro­gramme at the VIP Lounge at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo on Mon­day (Feb­ru­ary 10), Cud­joe-Lewis added that she was pleased to be part of the strides made in her Min­istry.

"In our coun­try and gov­ern­ment when par­ties change and ad­min­is­tra­tion change, they al­ways can­cel out what the oth­er per­son did. But what we want­ed to do was to cre­ate pro­grammes that will stick. The of­fi­cers, they are pub­lic ser­vants. I am a politi­cian. I am just pass­ing through. I don't even have con­trol as to how long I pass through for, how long is my stay. That is all from the peo­ple."

The To­ba­go na­tive is con­fi­dent she has made an im­pact.

"One day I will leave you and go on to some­where else, whether it is an­oth­er Min­istry or whether it is back to my pri­vate life but at the end of the day what you have learnt, what you have de­vel­oped and the struc­ture you have added no mat­ter which min­is­ter comes af­ter you have a sys­tem, tem­plate you can call your own," said Cud­joe-Lewis.

Sev­en­teen per­sons, who con­tributed to the suc­cess of SHAPE were ho­n­oured, in­clud­ing Jen­nifer Frank, Sharon O'Brien, In­shan Ali, Clay­ton Williams, Cather­ine Forde, An­tho­ny Creed, Shar­ma Ma­haraj, Wayne Drys­dale, Renel Clement, To­nia Roberts, Ed­ward Tuberoso, At­i­ba An­toine, Ge­of­frey Ed­wards, Stacey Cateau, Kwanieze John, An­nette Knott and Kieon Alexan­der.