Aba A Luke

Over the years, the say­ing, "Christ­mas is for chil­dren," has tak­en on a life of its own. The sim­ple state­ment holds tremen­dous mer­it, as many agree that gift giv­ing, the rit­u­als of light­ing Christ­mas trees, talk of San­ta Claus, shop­ping for presents for friends and fam­i­ly, mean more to chil­dren than to adults. As a re­sult, chil­dren are the fo­cus at one me­dia en­ti­ty for this Christ­mas sea­son. Em­ploy­ees of Trini­bash­ment 91.9FM have teamed up to cre­ate a joy­ful Christ­mas for chil­dren across T&T. At the helm of the ven­ture is on-air per­son­al­i­ty, Shel­don Haynes. In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Haynes ex­plained that the ven­ture, ini­tial­ly dubbed 91 Presents, was con­cep­tu­alised by both him­self and the com­pa­ny's sales man­ag­er, Car­la Beck­les. Now, al­most one month fol­low­ing its ini­ti­a­tion, 91 Presents has gained so much mo­men­tum, the num­ber in its ti­tle has changed to 919.

Nine hun­dred and nine­teen Presents seeks to bring smiles to the faces of youths across the coun­try, who for one rea­son or an­oth­er, have spent un­hap­py Christ­mases in the past. Whether these chil­dren have grown in un­der­priv­i­leged house­holds, or they've been placed in or­phan­ages, were forced to grow up on their own, or oth­er­wise, Haynes said, the con­cept aimed to bright­en their sea­son. "We've now ex­pand­ed the dri­ve to in­clude non per­ish­able food items," said Haynes. He high­light­ed that Christ­mas was a time when the less for­tu­nate should be as­sist­ed. The em­ploy­ees of the all-so­ca sta­tion have come to­geth­er, and ac­cord­ing to Haynes, are work­ing very hard at en­sur­ing the dri­ve is suc­cess­ful. "We're tar­get­ing chil­dren's homes first, with the hope that what we re­ceive can reach even fur­ther," said Haynes. He not­ed that gift bins have been erect­ed at drop-off points across both is­lands, with one at each of the ra­dio sta­tion's two lo­ca­tions, in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

"We've al­so placed bins at Bos Burg­er out­lets, and at Mom­my Sauce's restau­rant lo­cat­ed at Mor­vant Junc­tion, near the pa­n­yard." Haynes al­so in­di­cat­ed that a bin would be placed in south, for those yearn­ing to give there. On No­vem­ber 28, an all day telethon in­vit­ed callers to pledge what they could, and ac­cord­ing to Haynes, the idea was cer­tain­ly a suc­cess.

"We don't want peo­ple's mon­ey. We want this ven­ture to touch chil­dren in the most pre­cious way, with gifts they can ap­pre­ci­ate and be hap­py to have re­ceived," he said. Dur­ing the telethon, so­ca artiste Patch showed up at the fre­quen­cy, and pledged $1000 worth of presents, and called on oth­er artistes to come for­ward. Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter pledged 20 presents, while Iw­er George came for­ward with 30 presents. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Haynes said he was hap­py to see fel­low me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers 3rd Bass of 94.1FM, and De­von Matthews of RED 96.7FM show up at the sta­tion to of­fer sup­port and make their in­di­vid­ual pledges. For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion or to pledge, you can call the ra­dio sta­tion at 628-4531.