Stu­dents of the Cas­cade School for the Deaf and the Au­drey Jef­fers School for the Deaf will re­ceive a spe­cial de­liv­ery on Sep­tem­ber 9, just in time for the new aca­d­e­m­ic term. Renowned ed­u­ca­tor, au­thor, and pas­tor Frank M Porter will vis­it the Cas­cade in­sti­tu­tion to dis­trib­ute 15 copies of his Caribbean Rhythm In­te­grat­ed Lan­guage Arts Lit­er­a­cy and Nu­mer­a­cy Pro­gramme, which most of us may know as The Re­pub­lic Read­ers, with an ad­di­tion­al 15 des­ig­nat­ed for the sec­ond school.

From a so­cial jus­tice house­hold in the new­ly in­de­pen­dent Caribbean to the high­est lev­els of in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man rights ad­vo­ca­cy, Clarke has spent more than four decades mak­ing space for women, chal­leng­ing in­equal­i­ty and in­sist­ing that the strug­gle for jus­tice must con­tin­ue.

More than 200 chil­dren from com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go re­ceived back­packs and school sup­plies through the Hum­ming­bird House Foun­da­tion’s (THHF) an­nu­al Back-to-School Book­bag and Sup­plies Dis­tri­b­u­tion ini­tia­tive.

Long be­fore tourists be­gan stop­ping to pho­to­graph Dig­i­ty’s tow­er­ing mud vol­cano, vil­lagers of Pe­nal and Debe re­mem­ber sto­ries from 1938, when the earth opened and swal­lowed an oil well, leav­ing be­hind bub­bles of mud slur­ry and oil seeps.

In­de­pen­dence Day is a time for na­tion­al pride, and for the Prime Min­is­ter and mem­bers of her Gov­ern­ment, it was al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their per­son­al style. From el­e­gant fas­ci­na­tors and tai­lored suits to bold colours and sub­tle touch­es of the na­tion­al palette, these looks brought a fash­ion­able flair to the cel­e­bra­tions.

For Re­nee Gor­don, ed­u­ca­tion be­gan at home, long be­fore she ever imag­ined her­self be­com­ing an ed­u­ca­tor.

Founder/CEO and artis­tic di­rec­tor of Can­dice Clarke Acad­e­my of Dance (CCAD), Can­dice Clarke, said she lives by and en­cour­ages the bib­li­cal les­son of Colos­sians 3:23 (NIV): “What­ev­er you do, work at it with all your heart, as work­ing for the Lord, not for hu­man, mat­ters.”

This coun­try’s search for a more di­verse eco­nom­ic base re­mains among the more chal­leng­ing en­gage­ments of the cur­rent pe­ri­od.

Plié for the Arts cel­e­brat­ed its tenth-an­niver­sary re­gion­al tour with the Amal­ga­ma­tion Glob­al Dance Gala.

For chut­ney artiste Rawytee Ram­roop, the jour­ney from a 12-year-old girl win­ning the Mas­tana Ba­har com­pe­ti­tion to per­form­ing be­fore thou­sands of mu­sic lovers in South Africa is a tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of per­se­ver­ance, pas­sion and fam­i­ly in­spi­ra­tion.

Twelve-year-old per­cus­sion­ist Ta­fari Lalitte is the 2026 Tal­ent Pot cham­pi­on af­ter wow­ing the judges with a blend of the rhythms that move T&T.

A name syn­ony­mous with the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and who stood in the are­na along­side sev­er­al oth­er strong fe­male front­line acts who helped to pave the way for many of the tal­ents hap­pen­ing to­day, is Car­lene Wells.