Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

De­spite hav­ing to con­duct an al­most com­plete over­haul of their lay­out and lo­gis­tics in the lead-up to PRES­tige Fete 2026, the event man­age­ment team of the Alum­ni of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege San Fer­nan­do says they are on track to ex­ceed past ex­pec­ta­tions with this year’s all-in­clu­sive event.

Speak­ing with the Sun­day Guardian on Wednes­day, chair­man of the Pres­tige Past Stu­dents Foun­da­tion, Ains­ley Welch, said he was con­fi­dent that the man­age­ment team would be able to de­liv­er a qual­i­ty event even with a change in venue.

Last No­vem­ber, the Gov­ern­ment banned events from be­ing held at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (BLCA), cit­ing con­cerns of noise pol­lu­tion and dam­age to sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

The BLCA has been the venue of the PRES­tige Fete since its in­cep­tion 14 years ago.

“For far too long, the is­sue of noise pol­lu­tion and its neg­a­tive im­pact on com­mu­ni­ties has been ig­nored,” Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in a post last year.

Welch said the de­ci­sion prompt­ed the event’s man­age­ment team to make an about-turn on their plan as they were al­ready two and a half months in­to the plan­ning process.

He not­ed news of the change in venue was al­so met with some con­cern and hes­i­ta­tion from long-time pa­trons who ques­tioned whether the new venue, Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, would be able to fa­cil­i­tate such an event.

“Some of the con­cerns of our pa­trons at Skin­ner Park would be park­ing, al­so at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my, the sur­face would have been as­phalt as op­posed to a grassy sur­face, where we have now, and we rec­ti­fied that by hav­ing the req­ui­site floor­ing so the ladies with high heels wouldn’t have to con­tend with any soft, grassy ar­eas.

“We have more than ad­e­quate park­ing. The sec­ond ground is go­ing to be used as park­ing, plus park­ing from the South­ern Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts and park­ing at neigh­bour­ing busi­ness­es. Park­ing won’t be a prob­lem.

“We’re al­so mak­ing pro­vi­sions with a traf­fic plan with po­lice so pa­trons won’t be bot­tle­neck­ing to get to the venue. So we knew there would be chal­lenges when we changed the lo­ca­tion, but the pos­i­tives more than make up for the neg­a­tives, and we feel that Skin­ner Park is a fan­tas­tic space to of­fer that all-in­clu­sive ex­pe­ri­ence our pa­trons have grown ac­cus­tomed to.”

Welch said the PRES­tige Fete has been a fix­ture in the Car­ni­val cal­en­dar for south Trinidad, but has al­so gen­er­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue for the col­lege’s ac­tiv­i­ties and up­keep.

He said, aside from con­tribut­ing to the con­tin­ued de­vel­op­ment of the school’s phys­i­cal fa­cil­i­ties, the earn­ings from the fete al­so sup­port the school’s op­er­a­tions.

“Some­times it may be as sim­ple as a teacher who has been trans­ferred to an­oth­er school, and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has not been able to re­place that teacher in a time­ly man­ner, and the school has to use mon­ey from their own pock­ets to en­sure the boys have a teacher and con­tin­ue to learn with­out in­ter­rup­tion.

“Our crick­et team has been mak­ing great strides de­spite not be­ing known as a crick­et pow­er­house among sec­ondary schools.

“This means we have to fa­cil­i­tate bet­ter crick­et fa­cil­i­ties for the col­lege teams, so we have spent sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey to re­do the crick­et pitch.

“All of these things would nat­u­ral­ly be from Pres­tige, the school fete, and the monies that go to up­lift the lives of the boys at Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege.”

Welch said the theme of the fete this year is Is­sho (which means to­geth­er in Japan­ese), delves in­to Japan­ese cul­ture, which would be re­flect­ed in the decor, food, and drink op­tions.