KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Every year, steel band lead­ers are at the mer­cy of cor­po­rate T&T, plead­ing for funds for the Na­tion­al Panora­ma Com­pe­ti­tion, uni­forms, tun­ing and arrange­ment. 
But yes­ter­day, NL­CB Fon­claire Steel Or­ches­tra took a bold step to­wards self-suf­fi­cien­cy, open­ing a Lot­to booth and gift shop op­po­site its pa­n­yard along Dot­tin Street, San Fer­nan­do.

In­cor­po­rat­ed as a Non-Prof­it Or­gan­i­sa­tion to al­low in­ter­na­tion­al spon­sor­ship in 2019, the band reg­is­tered as an en­ter­prise in 2020 to be­come the eco­nom­ic hub with­in the Les Ef­fort East com­mu­ni­ty it oc­cu­pies.

At yes­ter­day’s com­mis­sion­ing,  man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Dar­ren Shep­pard said as a band ex­e­cutes its strate­gic plans, a car wash and bar are among their ob­jec­tives.

Look­ing for­ward, Shep­pard said the band wants to ac­quire all va­cant prop­er­ty along Dot­tin Street as it seeks to ex­pand. He said every­thing the band does would in­clude the com­mu­ni­ty. He said the open­ing of the Lot­to booth and gift shops al­ready pro­vid­ed jobs.
“The name Fon­claire stands for Fon­rose and Claire Streets. I am not knock­ing any­body; we did not go to the cin­e­ma to get our name. The name rep­re­sents our com­mu­ni­ty. It is who we are and what we are. Fon­claire has al­ways been the en­gine that dri­ves this com­mu­ni­ty. We want to make it the eco­nom­ic en­gine, hence the rea­son for ven­tur­ing in­to this busi­ness.” Shep­pard said.
San Fer­nan­do May­or Ju­nia Re­grel­lo be­lieves the Fon­claire mod­el is some­thing all steel bands should fol­low. CAL Skif­fle Steel Or­ches­tra, which Re­grel­lo leads, ap­plied for a Lot­to booth in 2003. How­ev­er, Re­grel­lo said the NL­CB re­ject­ed its re­quest be­cause there were al­ready sev­er­al ma­chines along Cof­fee Street. 
“I would sug­gest that every steel band should have a Lot­to out­let be­cause that is how you em­pow­er the steel band to cre­ate sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and this is some­thing we should re­al­ly con­sid­er,” Re­grel­lo said
NL­CB’s mar­ket­ing and pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Su­san Wor­rel first pre­sent­ed the idea of self-suf­fi­cien­cy to Fon­claire. Wor­rel said that when the band seeks do­na­tions, spon­sors would al­so see they are help­ing them­selves.
“Per­haps NL­CB Fon­claire can be an ex­am­ple to oth­er steel bands through­out Trinidad & To­ba­go,” Wor­rel said.
So far, the gift shop has snacks and T-shirts with more mer­chan­dise to come.

From the time the op­er­a­tor turned on the ma­chine, cus­tomers were lin­ing up.

The build­ing al­so pays trib­ute to the found­ing mem­bers of Fon­claire, in­clud­ing a large pic­ture of the band’s late leader Mil­ton “Wire” Austin, the late arranger Ken “Pro­fes­sor” Philmore and Rudin “Red­man” Austin with Shep­pard.