WE LIT–the newest in­ter­ven­tion for young adults by the Bo­cas Lit Fest–aims to turn young peo­ple on to Eng­lish Lan­guage and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture as pow­er­ful tools for every­day self-em­pow­er­ment. Spon­sored by the JB Fer­nan­des Memo­r­i­al Trust I, the pro­gramme is geared to­wards sec­ondary school stu­dents in Forms 3 to 5, and par­tic­u­lar­ly those who suf­fered most from the neg­a­tive ef­fects of the COVID pan­dem­ic, a re­lease stat­ed. The JB Fer­nan­des Memo­r­i­al Trust I pro­vides fund­ing for ini­tia­tives that pro­mote health, ed­u­ca­tion, and pover­ty re­duc­tion in Por­tu­gal, Trinidad & To­ba­go, and the Unit­ed States.

WE LIT runs par­al­lel to the school cur­ricu­lum and sup­ports aca­d­e­m­ic de­vel­op­ment while tak­ing a live­ly and cre­ative ap­proach in or­der to en­cour­age stu­dents to en­gage with and en­joy sto­ry­telling in all its forms.

"The free and in­ter­ac­tive CSEC lev­el Lit­er­a­ture and Lan­guage class­es us­es live per­for­mances and film and in­tro­duces learn­ers to books rel­e­vant to their ar­tic­u­lar chal­lenges.

"Kick­ing off with a so­cial me­dia video cam­paign, WE LIT in­cludes an on­line mas­ter­class on the pow­er of telling sto­ries host­ed by the 2022 First Cit­i­zens Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam Cham­pi­on Der­ron Sandy."

Dur­ing the roll-out in the Sep­tem­ber to De­cem­ber 2022 school term, par­tic­i­pants will de­vel­op nar­ra­tive po­ems and learn the ba­sic skills of jour­nalling, cre­ative writ­ing, short sto­ries, and po­et­ry.

The project, ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, al­so in­cor­po­rates a mi­ni school tour, fea­tur­ing stu­dents’ spo­ken word per­for­mances and short sto­ries. To close off WE LIT, a chap­book will be pro­duced and made avail­able as a li­brary re­source. All ma­te­ri­als pro­duced will be ac­ces­si­ble year-round, na­tion­wide.

Stu­dents en­rolling with WE LIT get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be part of the pi­lot co­hort of Bo­cas’ CSEC Eng­lish A and Eng­lish B on­line learn­ing ses­sions and to ac­quire var­i­ous valu­able skills in prepa­ra­tion for their ex­am­i­na­tions. The tu­to­ri­als are to be fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Mrs Char­lene Joseph-Holmes who teach­es Forms 2 to 6 Eng­lish Lan­guage, Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, Lit­er­a­ture in Eng­lish, and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies.

"The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in­ten­si­fied the dai­ly chal­lenges thou­sands of young peo­ple face, many of which are un­ad­dressed in the class­room, yet lit­er­a­ture is crit­i­cal for an in­di­vid­ual’s abil­i­ty to com­pre­hend and ar­tic­u­late thoughts and is es­sen­tial for per­son­al and ca­reer de­vel­op­ment.

"For CEO of Bo­cas Lit Fest, Jean-Claude Cour­nand, “Lit­er­a­ture is a mas­ter­ful mech­a­nism for self-re­flec­tion and self-ex­plo­ration. Books are our com­pan­ions, and we can grow to love them. WE LIT will en­cour­age stu­dents to read and write about them­selves, just one of the ways in which lit­er­a­ture can be ex­pe­ri­enced.”

Vis­it https://www.bo­caslit­fest.com/we-lit/ or fol­low @bo­caslit­fest on so­cial me­dia for more in­for­ma­tion or to sign up for WE LIT.