At age 11, Ish­mael Williams is one of the youngest par­tic­i­pants to be se­lect­ed as Most Out­stand­ing Stu­dent in the an­nu­al se­ries of pan con­struc­tion and tun­ing cours­es of­fered by Pan De­vel­op­ment Un­lim­it­ed (PDU) since the train­ing work­shops start­ed some four decades ago.

An elat­ed Williams, a stu­dent of St Mar­garet's Boys' AC School in Bel­mont, re­ceived his award for emerg­ing as the top stu­dent in the first cy­cle of the 2013 In­tro­duc­to­ry Pan Con­struc­tion Course. Mak­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion was Ron­da Fran­cis, man­ag­er, Cor­po­rate Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, BP Trinidad and To­ba­go, long­stand­ing spon­sors of the PDU train­ing work­shops, at the com­pa­ny's head-of­fice in Port-of-Spain re­cent­ly.

"I am re­al­ly hap­py to top the class in the pan con­struc­tion course. This will help me to un­der­stand the in­stru­ment bet­ter. I want to do more ad­vanced train­ing since I am al­ready think­ing of mak­ing a ca­reer in this field," said Williams, who plays the dou­ble-sec­ond pan with mul­ti­ple Ju­nior Panora­ma cham­pi­ons, St Mar­garet Boys AC.

Fran­cis con­grat­u­lat­ed Williams on his out­stand­ing achieve­ment, urg­ing him to "use this en­cour­ag­ing start as a step­ping stone" to achieve his goals in the field of mu­sic and pan. "You are al­ready on the right path, and if you con­tin­ue to demon­strate this dis­ci­pline and com­mit­ment, you can cer­tain­ly make your mark in the steel pan in­dus­try in the fu­ture," she said.

A re­lease from bpTT said the an­nu­al pan train­ing ini­tia­tive has been fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the com­pa­ny since the 1970s, with hun­dreds of young peo­ple, pri­mar­i­ly stu­dents, un­der­go­ing in­ten­sive train­ing in In­tro­duc­to­ry Pan Con­struc­tion and Ba­sic Pan Tun­ing Cours­es.

Bar­ry Yeates, PDU founder and man­ag­er, said Williams demon­strat­ed great ap­ti­tude dur­ing the course, not­ing that he was one of the youngest stu­dents ever to emerge top of his class since the work­shops be­gan. He thanked bpTT for col­lab­o­rat­ing with the pro­gramme which has nur­tured young tal­ent in the pan in­dus­try, with many for­mer stu­dents now pur­su­ing full-time ca­reers in dif­fer­ent as­pects of pan.

The In­tro­duc­to­ry Pan Con­struc­tion Course was con­duct­ed by tu­tor Musa Mo­hammed, a for­mer PDU stu­dent him­self.

?