The Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC) host­ed Di­vali cel­e­bra­tions un­der the theme “Life with Pros­per­i­ty” at the Old Teach­ers’ Train­ing Col­lege in Mau­si­ca last Fri­day.

The cel­e­bra­tion al­lowed the CCC’s cy­cle 2401 trainees to con­nect with mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty, who will cul­mi­nate weeks of prepa­ra­tion dur­ing fes­tiv­i­ties to­day—the of­fi­cial Di­vali hol­i­day.

Ma­jor David Ben­jamin, act­ing Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer of the T&T De­fence Force Re­serves and pro­gramme di­rec­tor of CCC, which op­er­ates un­der the aegis of the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice (MYDNS), ref­er­enced Di­vali’s tale of the tri­umph of light over dark­ness in de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress.

To the trainees, he said, “As you progress through your train­ing, re­mem­ber that you are not just ac­quir­ing skills, but al­so kin­dling the light of trans­for­ma­tion with­in your­selves. Every chal­lenge you over­come, every new skill you mas­ter, is a step to­wards a brighter fu­ture—for you and for Trinidad and To­ba­go”.

Ear­li­er, Pun­dit Avinash Ma­haraj presided over the open­ing cer­e­monies, be­stow­ing his bless­ings on the gath­er­ing and set­ting a spir­i­tu­al tone for the fes­tiv­i­ties.

The Mal­ick Hin­du Man­dia Group en­hanced the cel­e­bra­tion with their melo­di­ous per­for­mances, adding an artis­tic di­men­sion to the pro­ceed­ings.

The cel­e­bra­tion ex­em­pli­fied the CCC’s com­mit­ment to fos­ter­ing cul­tur­al un­der­stand­ing and in­clu­siv­i­ty, while pro­vid­ing its trainees with mean­ing­ful ex­po­sure to one of T&T’s most sig­nif­i­cant an­nu­al re­li­gious and cul­tur­al ob­ser­vances.