With cash strapped parents frantically running around trying to find the means to prepare their children to return to school in September, corporate citizens, community groups, churches and civic minded individuals have been stepping up to the plate, awarding scholarships and bursaries to our boys and girls.{{more}}

Kudos to GECCU, KCCU, the Police, Teachers’ Credit Union, LIME, Solidarity Inc, Sion Hill Friends, Building and Loan and so many others who, year after year, make this invaluable investment in our youngsters, while easing the burden on their parents and giving back to the community!

Runner-up:

The contingent of 60 Vincentian pannists from Starlift Steel Orchestra now in Trinidad and Tobago are having their best week ever as they represent St Vincent and the Grenadines in the inaugural International Panorama Competition. This group of SVG’s finest will compete with an eight-minute arrangement of Alston Becket Cyrus’ “Teaser” and will come up against steel bands from all around the world including Asia, Europe, North America and the Caribbean. We know they’re competing in the Mecca of steel pan among the best in the world, but with world class pannists in the group and the wonderful legacy of Starlift behind them, a win from our musicians is not too much to hope for!

Over the last week, Vincentians witnessed the hapless launch of the international campaign of Belizean Wellington C Ramos to become the ultimate, the one-and-only global leader of the amorphous Garifuna nation.

From Grieggs to Dangriga; Sandy Bay to the Bronx; Los Angeles to Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua, Garifuna people listened in horror as their own representative groups were dismissed by the goodly gentleman as being “monkeys” and “without substance”, while duly elected governments were told that he, not they, had the right to represent and look out for the welfare of their Garifuna citizens.

Get a grip, Ramos! Even if you have just begun your journey to reconnect with your spiritual homeland, don’t assume the same for every other Garifuna person!

Runner-up:

Taking a distant second in the race for the Worst Week Ever was that clueless Kingstown youngster who stole milk intended for babies whose mothers are HIV positive and cannot breast feed, then turned around and went to police headquarters in Kingstown to sell it to the law officers. It turns out that he went to the barracks after he received a phone call from undercover law officers saying the police were looking for baby milk to buy! The Week That Was would like to nominate the young man for a starring role in the pilot of SVG’s ‘dumbest criminals,’ soon to come to a television station near you.

I’d ask when would the ‘constitution’ being prepared for governance of our Garifuna citizens be debated in Parliament and if the present Constitution of St Vincent and the Grenadines has any provision for one particular ethnic group to be governed by another constitution in addition to the real thing.

Media Watch!

When would WE FM and LIME sort out that “telephone problem” that has been frustrating callers and talk show hosts for months? Is it that there is no technician in St Vincent and the Grenadines who can figure out why the telephone lines at WE FM can be tied up for hours on end by forces unknown, keeping out legit callers who want to make a contribution?