How did the Mercedes Benz motor-car just outside the corridor leading to the Hilton Hotel's grand ballroom arrive there last Tuesday? Many of us stood, wondered and tried our best to figure it out. But then I remembered that a Toyota Rav4, a Ford Focus and an Opel Electra from Platinum Motors were all on display inside the actual building.
Having strolled through the Better Living, Home, Health and Garden exposition organised by St Joseph Convent, Port of Spain, last Tuesday and Wednesday at the hotel, it was obvious that that there is very little that the Convent's Parents Support Committee cannot achieve.
Scores of visitors came to the extremely well-organised, second biennial fundraiser in aid of the Convent's Multi Media Facility, which will be opened at the start of the new school year in September. "We did not build a new building" says Elizabeth Crouch, principal of the school "we renovated the school library to create four multi media classrooms costing approximately three million dollars, with the emphasis on using technology for teaching and learning. Children learn traditionally in classroom settings, and also in laboratories. A third dynamic way to teach them is through multi media forms, using video and audio materials, the internet, e-books, a lot of three dimensional forms, and simulations which are very important as this way you can do experiments which can't be done in the lab. When they go into universities, here and abroad, this is how they will be expected to learn so that secondary schools must begin to prepare them for a world that has already changed."
Terese Ng Chow, chairman of the Committee, whose two daughters have already left the Convent, is hopeful that all of Trinidad will benefit from the Convent's start of a multi media facility. "We, the parents wanted to take learning to another level. Everything is in there, we will not have to wait for things to appear in print as we now do. In other countries students are already being taught by this method, we are late."
While the government, through the Secondary Education Modernisation Programme, promised to assist the Convent, the parents did not want to wait and decided to go ahead with full installation of the facility. The exhibition was the Convent's way of trying to get away from the general public's idea that schools are always begging. Ng Chow and her Committee did not see this as a good example or mindset for the children to grow up with "so we decided let us join hands with the business community and let us do it as a business venture. And we took it to the corporate citizens as a business proposition."
The name, Better Living, Home, Health and Garden, was chosen because the project involved children for whom a better way of living must start in the home. Hence the reason, the forty booths were leased to a wide cross-section of companies involved in the production and sales of pharmaceuticals, food, garments, beauty products and other relevant items. The displays were just one part of the project as every hour there were talks and demonstrations by experts in many interesting fields, dentistry, the environment, personal image, dietetics, floral arrangements, interior decorating and even origami from the Japanese Embassy, while the youngsters were occupied with the things they like, such as, egg painting.
At the end of the two-day fair, the Convent's multi media facility fund was richer through the rentals of the booths, and the corporate partners had done brisk business in a well-organised environment.
"Every company" says Ng Chow "was extremely satisfied because we didn't just rent them space, we carried out our responsibility to bring people there where they were displaying and selling their products. They were extremely pleased, thanked us for the manner in which we had organised the fair and asked not to be forgotten next time around."