Sports and cultural activities to be boosted in October annually (+Video)

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) will soon have two days in October of each year assigned specifically for sporting and cultural activities.

Prime Minister (PM) Dr Ralph Gonsalves, speaking on Emancipation Day, Monday, August 1, said he will soon take a proposal to Cabinet where every October 21 or 22 (or the weekend closest to it, the Saturday and Sunday) will be days of sports and culture throughout the country.

The PM said the decision is being taken at the highest level in order to make sports and culture more dominant in communities across the nation.

“We have to use our culture and sports more … Saturday and Sunday this year, and as close to that each year, our churches with their gospel music, the elderly with their string band, the music in the villages, the songs, the sports … and bind us together, bind us together, bind us with love, and bind us with unity- and give no space whatever for the gunman them,” the Prime Minister said to a large gathering of patrons at the Victoria Park for the ‘One Family’ concert that was in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

Gonsalves said initiatives like these are important as the countries of the Caribbean have had shared experiences and these experiences must be translated into shared expressions.

“Those expressions are in the form of culture and sports, but there are also formal institutional expressions, including our independence, our government, our CARICOM, which despite all is limitations and weaknesses has had tremendous accomplishments, and which holds immense promise because of its strength and possibilities.”

He said sports and culture must be used more to help uplift the people.

“There are some people who know the price of everything and the value of noting but from the genius of our people over the years, we have built a viable civilization.

“We are metaphorically like a symphony. We are the songs of the indigenous people, the kalinago and the Garifuna. We are the riddim of Africa, we are the melody of Europe, we are the cords of Asia and we are the home grown lyrics of the Caribbean.

“From time to time, as in all symphonies, there will be dissonances, there will be differences but we must solve those differences through the genius of our people through our culture, through our sports and through our institutions, our parliament, our law courts. We must never solve our dissonances, our differences with violence or with guns,” the Prime Minister noted, while adding that it is only a small minority who operate as thugs.

He said other countries had events similar to the ‘One Family’ concert and we must take the message from our songs to help lift us up.

“And we must use this genius of our people in music and sports. We have done a lot, but we can do far more,” Gonsalves noted.