Teenag­er Bran­don Fran­cis has been giv­en the per­fect head-start for a prospec­tive ca­reer in the steel pan in­dus­try by emerg­ing as the Most Out­stand­ing Stu­dent in an in­ten­sive Ba­sic Pan Tun­ing course spon­sored by en­er­gy com­pa­ny, bpTT. "Win­ning this award is re­al­ly ex­cit­ing, since I want to pur­sue a ca­reer in pan tun­ing. This course has opened my eyes to the op­por­tu­ni­ties in the world of pan. I am go­ing to use this ex­pe­ri­ence as a step­ping stone to ful­fill my ob­jec­tives," said an elat­ed Fran­cis, 14, a stu­dent of Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, and a play­er with Val­ley Harps Steel Or­ches­tra since the age of sev­en.

The six-week pan tun­ing course was con­duct­ed by Pan De­vel­op­ment Un­lim­it­ed (PDU), which has col­lab­o­rat­ed with bpTT in train­ing work­shops in­volv­ing the steel pan for sev­er­al years.

Ron­da Fran­cis, Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty man­ag­er, bpTT, who pre­sent­ed young Fran­cis (no re­la­tion) with his award on Sep­tem­ber 21, con­grat­u­lat­ed him on his out­stand­ing achieve­ment and urged him to pur­sue his dreams. She said bpTT was hap­py to con­tin­ue its rich tra­di­tion of in­volve­ment in the steel pan in­dus­try by help­ing to de­vel­op its hu­man re­source cap­i­tal. PDU founder and man­ag­er, Bar­ry Yeates, said Fran­cis ex­celled in punc­tu­al­i­ty, at­ten­dance, per­son­al at­ti­tude and ap­ti­tude and abil­i­ty. "Many per­sons who re­ceived their first for­mal train­ing at our cours­es have gone on to make a name for them­selves in the pan move­ment. This could not have been pos­si­ble with­out the great part­ner­ship we have forged with bpTT since the 1970s," he not­ed.

Yeates said PDU, which start­ed its pi­o­neer­ing work in 1976, was com­mit­ted to the con­tin­u­ing de­vel­op­ment of the pan move­ment to trans­form it in­to a sus­tain­able in­dus­try. Among the not­ed pan­nists who "cut their teeth" at PDU are Andy Neils, Ronald Matthews, Win­ston Pas­call, John 'Jap' Chow, Mervyn 'Bis­mar­ck' Ray and Musa Muhammed. Muhammed, who per­formed du­ties as tu­tor for the course, said he felt "a great sense of sat­is­fac­tion" to have start­ed his pan ca­reer with train­ing at PDU and to be able to give back some­thing to the young pan as­pi­rants.