Com­mon­wealth Day will be cel­e­brat­ed on Mon­day.

Pa­trons at the One Com­mon­wealth Green Mar­ket in San­ta Cruz on Sat­ur­day were not on­ly treat­ed to lo­cal­ly grown food, drink and ar­ti­san prod­ucts but al­so rubbed shoul­ders with na­tion­al sport­ing he­roes like World Cham­pi­onships bronze box­ing medal­ist Nigel Paul, woman box­er Tian­na Guy, and Team TTO cy­clist Kwe­si Browne and sports nu­tri­tion­ist Tra­cy Pierre.

British High Com­mis­sion­er Har­ri­et Cross said "The British High Com­mis­sion want­ed to cel­e­brate the Com­mon­wealth which is like a fam­i­ly of 52 na­tions which share cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic and his­toric el­e­ments.

"To­day we've got the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion with a group of women from the San­ta Rosa First Peo­ples Com­mu­ni­ty, we have a stall from the Ja­maican High Com­mis­sion serv­ing some amaz­ing (Mar­ley) cof­fee.

"We've got the In­di­an High Com­mis­sion talk­ing about bio­di­ver­si­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty and al­so got some ath­letes from the Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion, so T&T is re­al­ly well rep­re­sent­ed as well.

"We're al­so serv­ing a cur­ry called the Birm­ing­ham Balti (naan bread and chan­na) be­cause the 2022 Com­mon­wealth Games are go­ing to be held in Birm­ing­ham, from Ju­ly 28 to Au­gust 8 and it's time to cel­e­brate sport as well as cul­ture.

Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Ku­mar Gup­ta said that they were work­ing with the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture in col­lab­o­ra­tion with NAMDE­V­CO to sup­port the San­ta Rosa First Peo­ples Com­mu­ni­ty in the de­vel­op­ment of their in­dige­nous food se­cu­ri­ty project.

He ex­plained that the First Peo­ples were very good at grow­ing cas­sa­va, how­ev­er, the next step was pack­ag­ing and mar­ket­ing, hence the min­istry's tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance to help them bring their prod­ucts to mar­ket.

Gup­ta stressed that it was very im­por­tant in many places, in­clud­ing Cana­da's in­dige­nous peo­ples, to work with vul­ner­a­ble in­dige­nous pop­u­la­tions.

In­dia High Com­mis­sion Sec­ond Sec­re­tary (Com­merce) Lin­gi Chet­ty com­ment­ed that as a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of 1.3 bil­lion peo­ple, it was more in In­dia's in­ter­est to fo­cus on such is­sues as sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, di­ver­si­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­scious­ness.

He said be­sides the bi­lat­er­al trade be­tween In­dia and T&T, In­dia was one of the first coun­tries through its Vac­cine Maitri pro­gramme to pro­vide COVID-19 vac­cines to T&T as well as oth­er coun­tries ear­ly in the pan­dem­ic.

San­ta Rosa First Peo­ples Com­mu­ni­ty Chief Ri­car­do Bharath-Her­nan­dez said mem­bers part­nered with the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion and agri­cul­ture min­istry on 25 acres of their land to ad­vance cas­sa­va pro­duc­tion and prod­ucts.

Pres­i­dent of the T&T Com­mon­wealth Games As­so­ci­a­tion Bri­an Lewis said he was ab­solute­ly de­light­ed that the ath­letes were par­tic­i­pat­ing in the event pro­mot­ing healthy lifestyles and eat­ing habits, and sup­port­ing lo­cal.

He said the Birm­ing­ham Games were al­so an im­por­tant out­reach for the ath­letes to gar­ner world ex­pe­ri­ence.