A week ago today, Wayne Caines already had plenty of responsibility resting on his shoulders.

He was working as a high-profile Crown counsel in some of the Island?s biggest legal cases, serving as a Captain in the Bermuda Regiment, and teaching a GED programme for those who failed to graduate ? all in addition to being a husband and father.

Then came the announcement that new Premier Ewart Brown had handed him a place as a PLP representative in the Senate. Speaking before the election and being handed that role, the 36-year-old admitted: ?I don?t want to be too overly ambitious, but whenever one joins any organisation, being in the top post be a part of it. I tell my daughter to try to be number one at whatever you do. Do I see myself as Premier one day? I guess the answer?s ?yes?.?

After the news came out about his role in the Upper House, he was keen to stress: ?Now I have to temper my ambitions with being able to play with a team and be effective as a Senator.?

That new role ? coupled with a further announcement that he was to be the new Premier?s Chief of Staff - may have come as a surprise to some. However, according to Sen. Caines, a political career is a natural progression in a life focused on serving the community.

?I think that my life is dedicated to service. I think that politics is a natural evolution in that process for me. I am still evolving as a person and a professional,? he said. ?I feel that I am being pulled into politics ? I am being compelled ? because every day people come up to me and tell me their problems. My phone is constantly ringing with people asking me for guidance and support.?

He has pledged to use his time in the Senate to speak out for disenfranchised Bermudians, and believes his experiences as a lawyer, soldier and educator have given him a clear insight into what?s wrong with Bermuda. ?There are so many outstanding issues that we have to deal with. One is housing.

?Two, we have to deal with an increasing problem with young people generally not being able to find their rightful place in Bermuda, male and female.

?We have to look at the growing disenfranchised element among black men. We have to look at our educational system, mentoring and incorporating young men into the mainstream of our society.?

Sen. Caines used the Jewish and Indian communities as examples of those using rites of passage and an understanding of history and culture to give young people a sense of where they fit in. ?If that translates over to the young Bermudian men, they do not understand their history and legacy, and they do not understand where they fit into the paradigm which is Bermuda,? he said.

Sen. Caines, a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, used himself as an example of how important it is for young people to be given encouragement and guidance by people they look up to ? not necessarily through formal mentorship organisations but within churches and the wider community.

He has been married for ten years to commercial lawyer Maxanne Anderson, and has a nine-year-old daughter, Maxii.

He gained a law degree from the University of Kent at Canterbury in England, and was called to the bar in 2001 after previously working for fibre-optic cable company Global Crossing.

He credits Assistant Cabinet Secretary Judith Hall-Bean ? a family friend ? for encouraging him to become a prosecutor.

?She just felt that I should be doing more,? he explained. ?Khamisi Tokunbo, who was the Director of Public Prosecutions at that time, basically took a chance on me.

?Somebody had to believe in me. It was not that I had an extraordinary amount of talent. I was an ordinary person. But somebody took a chance on me.?

?What I always evolve back to is what helped me. My heroes are not traditional. My heroes are men that work hard, that are faithful to their wives and are dedicated to the church. They set examples by living uprightly. They are not big and fancy men.?

?Where Bermuda has failed, where our leaders have failed, where our black men have failed, where our politicians have failed, is mentoring other men.

?Taking on the young men in your office, going out and being more involved in your community clubs ? in the football clubs, in the workman?s clubs. Leadership has to evolve.

?There are many leaders who have led for 20 years, but we have created no clear path for anyone behind them. We all have a responsibility outside of ourselves to help someone else find their way.?

He added: ?A young person in Bermuda is told to go away to university, get a degree, when you come home, get a house.

?That?s what?s pushed in our community. Never service. We have gone away from that which has made us strong ? our church and our community.

?Those were the basics for the success of people of colour in Bermuda. If someone built a house on a Sunday morning it was a work rally of all the family and the friends and they did it together as a community.

?We have gone away from that, and in the pursuit of Mammon, in the pursuit of things, we are chasing the proverbial Bermudian dream without developing the proper system of values, without understanding how it affects us socially.

?The kids only see the fancy car, the flat screen TV. They do not understand the sacrifice that it takes to get those things,? he said. ?Many parents say ?I want to make sure my child has this because I never had it?.

?Instead of giving them what they did have ? hard work, dedication and character, the things that made us strong.?

Pledging to do all he could to help change things for the better, he said: ?The challenge is for men of my generation to step up to the proverbial plate.

?Not to get caught up in the trappings of a vacation four times a year and getting promotion on your job. If you are not getting back to the fabric of Bermuda you are becoming part of the problem.?