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.