Last Sat­ur­day, I en­gaged in one of my favourite ac­tiv­i­ties - I have many and it's hard to choose one - but no mat­ter how you spin it, the Fa­ti­ma Col­lege Alum­ni Oc­to­ber Food Fest is a must do once var­i­ous oblig­a­tions in­clud­ing the de­mands of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion al­low me the time and space.

It must be said I am one of those in­di­vid­u­als who re­tain fond mem­o­ries of my school days and Fa­ti­ma Col­lege re­mains high on my list.

So every op­por­tu­ni­ty I get to sup­port the school's ef­forts to de­liv­er­ing a qual­i­ty ex­pe­ri­ence that isn't on­ly fo­cused on ed­u­ca­tion, I jump in head first.

The Food Fest al­so al­lows me the show­case to live out my buck­et list fan­ta­sy of be­ing a Miche­lin star chef. A mix of con­tra­dic­tions con­trived to cre­ate what sym­pa­thet­ic friends de­scribe as a great tast­ing dish.

This year I con­coct­ed a ba­by back pork ribs de­light dubbed Bar­ran­quil­la Baila La Calle. The Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Games was held this year in Bar­ran­quil­la, Colom­bia and Team TTO came home with a bag of medals so fit­ting­ly, I cel­e­brat­ed with an ap­pro­pri­ate­ly named dish.

The Food Fest isn't the on­ly oc­ca­sion I chan­nel su­per chef as­pi­ra­tions, I do the same for the Har­vard Club rug­by team cook-out fund-rais­er.

As with the CAC Games in Bar­ran­quil­la, the Har­vard Club rug­by team had a T&T Rug­by Union (TTR­FU) 15-a-side sea­son to re­mem­ber.

I will, there­fore, have to come up with a name that while it will not dis­re­spect the two long-stand­ing lo­cal rug­by big two clubs, it will ac­knowl­edge the achieve­ments of the Har­vard's rug­by team - the reign­ing na­tion­al cham­pi­ons.

When you look back at fund-rais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties by sports or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tions, one will re­call the days of cake sales and car wash and bar-b-que where every sin­gle as­pect of the process was done by club mem­bers and vol­un­teers.

Nowa­days it's cook-outs and boat rides. No mat­ter what the op­tion is tak­en, what still re­mains very much hard work is the ac­tu­al sell­ing of the tick­ets as char­i­ty or non-prof­it fund-rais­ing is very com­pet­i­tive. Peo­ple are spoilt for choic­es.

But in the pre­vail­ing eco­nom­ic cli­mate sports or­gan­i­sa­tions will have lit­tle choice but to find dif­fer­ent ways to gen­er­ate funds. Cook-outs serve a myr­i­ad of pur­pos­es not on­ly fund-rais­ing but im­prov­ing the re­la­tion­ship among team­mates which is a vi­tal so­cial de­vel­op­ment in every­one's grow­ing up.

Ed­i­tor's Note

Bri­an Lewis is the Pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and the views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.