Plant Trinbagrow - Pan Trinbago aims for financial sustainability
There was no allocation to special interests groups in 2021 because there was no Carnival. The governing bodies of mas, pan and calypso had to find alternative ways of raising funds to carry on its business for the year.
This caused Pan Trinbago’s president Beverley Ramsey-Moore – while laying in bed one day – to ask, “Lord where do we go from here?”
She also asked herself, “What is it that Pan Trinbago has? What do we really have?”
Then the answer came to her. The pan body has land, 11.5 acres at Trincity to be exact, and she has always believed that land is capital.
This, coupled with Ramsey-Moore’s vision to see prosperity in pan, has created Project Plant Trinbagrow.
While the project is in its developmental stages, the overall objective is to grow crops, package it and sell it under a Pan Trinbago label. Ramsey-Moore did not wish to say which crops will be planted just yet.
This will also help the organisation on its drive to financial sustainability, Ramsey-Moore said in a phone interview.
When Ramsey-Moore became the organisation’s president in 2018, it was no secret that there was nothing in the Pan Trinbago coffers.
“We met an organisation that was bankrupt and in debt,” she said. But this did not deter the new executive, and as a transformational leader she knew that “one day the glory would come.”
Pan Trinbago’s strongest asset has always been it’s over 300 steelbands and Ramsey-Moore said, “together we knew that we would have rebuilt this organisation.”
It is these members; their families and friends that Pan Trinbago will look to when it starts project Plant Trinbagrow.
Melissa Doughty
Trinidad and Tobago Newsday
