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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Two of T&T’s top choirs in concert to raise funds for UWI students

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792 days ago
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As an ed­u­ca­tor, Dr Ster­ling Frost finds it dis­heart­en­ing to see stu­dents with im­mense aca­d­e­m­ic po­ten­tial un­der­go se­vere dis­tress due to an in­abil­i­ty to fi­nance their ed­u­ca­tion.

“This age-old but bur­geon­ing is­sue, par­tic­u­lar­ly through­out the last two years, con­tin­ues to chal­lenge uni­ver­si­ties glob­al­ly to mo­bilise sup­port for their stu­dent pop­u­la­tions, at in­creas­ing­ly ro­bust and in­no­v­a­tive lev­els,” Frost said.

As a re­sult of these fi­nan­cial strains Frost said, the UWI De­vel­op­ment and En­dow­ment Fund (UWIDEF) has been ramp­ing up ef­forts to make a max­i­mum im­pact “by of­fer­ing a life­line” to as many stu­dents as they can, who are most in need of that fi­nan­cial help.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Cam­pus Coun­cil Meet­ing last week, the Prin­ci­pal of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus Prof Rose-Marie Belle An­toine out­lined how fi­nan­cial con­straints have been af­fect­ing stu­dents.

She said de­spite the in­sti­tu­tion of­fer­ing the low­est de­gree costs out of all re­gion­al cam­pus­es, dur­ing the 2021/22 pe­ri­od, stu­dent en­rol­ment num­bers for un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate pro­grammes de­creased by 8.7 per cent and 28 per cent re­spec­tive­ly.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, both un­der­grad­u­ate and post­grad­u­ate stu­dents had ac­cess to the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme, which pro­vid­ed free tu­ition to can­di­dates.

Now, how­ev­er, un­der­grad­u­ates and oth­er stu­dents have to un­der­go a means test to be able to ac­cess vary­ing lev­els of fund­ing.

Frost said the re­sult of UWIDEF ef­forts has been over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive!

“The UWIDEF is ex­treme­ly pleased that we have been able to ap­peal to that in­her­ent­ly Caribbean trait of ‘lend­ing a hand,’ re­sult­ing in a grow­ing net­work of part­ners.

This in­cludes in­di­vid­ual donors who have re­peat­ed­ly made con­tri­bu­tions to the fund, and most heart­en­ing­ly, hun­dreds of or­di­nary cit­i­zens who have sup­port­ed our ven­tures not be­cause it will ben­e­fit a loved one or friend but sim­ply be­cause they too, be­lieve in giv­ing our stu­dents the best chance they can to se­cure aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess.

“In fact, most of them will re­main un­known, but cer­tain­ly not un­ap­pre­ci­at­ed, for their kind­ness and gen­eros­i­ty,” Frost said.

In this vein of try­ing to as­sist stu­dents, UWIDEF has in­clud­ed a new event in its an­nu­al fundrais­ing cal­en­dar.

UWIDEF has raised funds pri­mar­i­ly through the stag­ing of two ma­jor an­nu­al events: The UWI Car­ni­val Fete and The UWI Golf Chal­lenge.

“You may re­call that last year we held the in­au­gur­al Gar­den Par­ty, and we plan to ex­pand our suite of fundrais­ers on the UWIDEF’s cal­en­dar be­cause the UWIDEF re­mains a crit­i­cal re­source in paving the way for de­serv­ing stu­dents to pur­sue their aca­d­e­m­ic dreams, un­de­terred by fi­nan­cial con­straints,” Frost said.

On April 2, at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um, two dis­tinct­ly Trin­bag­on­ian chorale gi­ants—The Sig­nal Hill Alum­ni Choir and The Ly­di­an Singers—will be fea­tured in a dou­ble-head­lined ben­e­fit con­cert, ti­tled Ig­nite.

The Sig­nal Hill Alum­ni Choir, found­ed in 1984, re­mains the stan­dard-bear­er of To­ba­go’s chorale cul­ture. They bring a unique and root­ed folk style to every per­for­mance.

The choir is renowned for its ac­com­plish­ments in the T&T Mu­sic Fes­ti­val Folk cat­e­gories and since the ear­ly 2000s has per­formed in North Amer­i­ca, Eu­rope, Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean with per­for­mances at the UN As­sem­bly, and be­fore glob­al icons Arch­bish­op Desmond Tu­tu and Queen Eliz­a­beth II.

For the UWIDEF Ben­e­fit Con­cert, Sig­nal Hill Alum­ni Choir will present the essence and vi­bran­cy of in­dige­nous folk and fes­ti­val mu­sic. And as for The Ly­di­an Sign­ers, they too are no strangers to the T&T Mu­sic Fes­ti­val stage. Formed in 1979 by Bish­op Anstey High School Choir Mis­tress Joyce Spence, the Ly­di­an Singers won over 30 Fes­ti­val tro­phies in the last 30 years.

The Ly­di­an Singers per­formed op­eras such as Tu­ran­dot, Or­pheus and Eu­ry­dice and Scenes from Hi­awatha, as well as both clas­sic and mod­ern sa­cred works, rang­ing from Ver­di’s Re­quiem to Fr Jose Maria Vi­ti­er of Cu­ba’s Misa Cubana.

Of course, it was un­der the ba­ton of artist, aca­d­e­m­ic and cul­tur­al icon Dr Pa­tri­cia “Pat” Bish­op that the Ly­di­ans re­al­ly blos­somed, dis­tin­guish­ing them­selves by per­form­ing var­i­ous clas­si­cal and con­tem­po­rary works with a unique fu­sion of our na­tion­al in­stru­ment, the steel­pan, cou­pled with tas­sa and African drum­ming.

This award-win­ning choir will be sup­port­ed by The Ly­di­an Steel en­sem­ble which re­cent­ly cel­e­brat­ed 25 years and promis­es a reper­toire to thrill all pa­trons at this ben­e­fit.


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