Sean Nero

With prof­its at Sco­tia­bank T&T stay­ing healthy, the steel­band move­ment can look for­ward to bank re-in­vest­ing in their cul­tur­al ef­forts, its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Anya Schnoor said.

The Sco­tia­bank Foun­da­tion re­cent­ly dis­trib­uted $250,000 in grants to 60 un­spon­sored steel­bands in prepa­ra­tion for the Na­tion­al Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion and Car­ni­val 2015.

Of­fi­cials of Pan Trin­ba­go joined the Sco­tia­bank team at fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion's hos­pi­tal­i­ty suite at the Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, for the pre­sen­ta­tions to sin­gle pan bands, as well as con­ven­tion­al or­ches­tras in dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories.

Schnoor said the bank had a good year and as a re­sult its board and man­age­ment were hap­py to share its wealth with or­gan­i­sa­tions that con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly and rich­ly to so­ci­ety.

"To rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the var­i­ous re­gions�north, south/cen­tral, east and To­ba­go, we hope that the con­tri­bu­tions of Sco­tia­bank are able to be of as­sis­tance to you–whether it be in a small or big way for the Na­tion­al Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion. It heart­ens me at events such as this, where the val­ue we added is clear­ly seen," she said.

"That is what we aim for–to con­tribute in a mean­ing­ful way to the ad­vance­ment of T&T. We are grate­ful to the per­sons who have tak­en time out of their busi­ness sched­ules, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the fes­tive time of year."

Gise­le del V Marfleet, chair­man of the Foun­da­tion, un­der­scored the com­mit­ment of the steel­band com­mu­ni­ty in pur­suit of their craft. She said the idea of the en­gaged com­mu­ni­ty was one the Foun­da­tion viewed as hav­ing a great deal of rel­e­vance and val­ue in so­ci­ety.

Steel­bands, as in­de­pen­dent mu­si­cal groups many of which were un­signed, had to show tal­ent, in­ge­nu­ity and work eth­ic, in or­der to thrive as cre­ative out­lets. These groups, del V Marfleet said, were prod­ucts of pas­sion and al­though in­di­vid­ual pas­sions were the source of in­spi­ra­tion, she be­lieved it was safe to say the source of longevi­ty in these cre­ative groups was the pas­sion of the com­mu­ni­ty.

"In our works, Sco­tia­bank, through its Foun­da­tion seeks to give back in a way that not on­ly ex­ter­nal­ly adds val­ue, but rather pro­vide the means for com­mu­ni­ties to con­tin­ue to cre­ate val­ue in­ter­nal­ly.

"To achieve this goal, we seek part­ner­ships with like-mind­ed, in­dus­tri­ous groups of peo­ple who are in­ter­est­ed in the de­vel­op­ment of our na­tion. As a con­se­quence of this search, our re­la­tion­ship with the steel­band com­mu­ni­ty rep­re­sents a mod­el of the pro-so­cial part­ner­ships the Foun­da­tion seeks to make in com­mu­ni­ties through­out our twin-is­land re­pub­lic," she said.

Del V Marfleet added: "Com­mit­ment, as we all are aware, re­quires sac­ri­fice, and it is through their sac­ri­fice that our cul­ture is en­riched.

"This is to say that we�as a na­tion�not on­ly ben­e­fit from their com­mit­ment to cre­ative en­er­gies, but al­so the cost of bring­ing these en­er­gies to bear," she said.