Michelle Loubon

Singing a ser­e­nal and aguinal­do, Los Alum­nos de San Juan par­ran­deros charmed with their inim­itable style. Lead singer Ali­cia Jages­sar said the ser­e­nal was a "plea to come in­side." "When you go house-to-house parang­ing, if they like the mu­sic, they would let you in­side. That is a ser­e­nal," she said.

Parang so­ca pi­o­neer Ed­win "Crazy"?Ay­oung belt­ed out the pop­u­lar Tito Lara trib­ute-on be­half of the late San­ta Cruz par­ran­dero. A few pa­trons ad­mired his Barack Oba­ma 2008 but­ton. Ay­oung re­mind­ed them he had pre­dict­ed in his song, In Time To Come, Amer­i­ca would have a black pres­i­dent.

Ra­dio per­son­al­i­ty Ray­mond Ed­wards en­cour­aged every­one to sing the re­frain-"It's the most won­der­ful time of the year." Su­perla­tives fol­lowed. Fr Clyde Har­vey joined Ed­wards as he ded­i­cat­ed an R&B-styled ver­sion of Hap­py Birth­day to Har­vey. He al­so came in for ku­dos for his con­fer­ral with an hon­orary doc­tor­ate (De­gree of Doc­tor of Laws (LLD)?Hon­oris Causa) from St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.

These were high­lights at the Young Women's Chris­t­ian As­so­ci­a­tion (YW­CA) fund-rais­ing parang break­fast meet­ing at Hilton Trinidad, St Ann's, re­cent­ly. Among those present were Dr Jean Ramjohn-Richards and past pres­i­dent Keisha Cruik­shank.

Hop­ing to re­build pre-school

Co-or­di­na­tor Joy Du­mas said they were hop­ing to con­tribute a sum of the es­ti­mat­ed $800,000 to­wards re­build­ing the YW­CA pre-school at San Fer­nan­do.

Du­mas said:?"The fund goes to the pre-school since the chil­dren have been dis­placed. It was gut­ted by fire three years ago. We are build­ing a sec­tion of it. We had the first break­fast dur­ing the SOE. We need all the help to make it an an­nu­al event."

Ramjohn-Richards said, "More girls should join YW­CA and sim­i­lar or­gan­i­sa­tions."? Asked about Christ­mas wish­es for T&T, she said, "I?hope ever­body en­joys Christ­mas in a sober way. Let us re­flect on what has gone be­fore and en­deav­our to do bet­ter for next year."

Along with the in­fec­tious and mel­low parang mu­sic, pa­trons en­joyed a sump­tu­ous smor­gas­bord in­clud­ing lo­cal del­i­ca­cies like salt­fish buljol, hops, ham, turkey, fruit and ce­re­al.

For more parang in­fo, call 355-5648/315-7891/737-5698/ www.parang­mu­sic.wee­bly.com.

ABOUT YW­CA

YW­CA has a gen­der-based vi­o­lence pro­gramme called In Her Shoes?as it con­tin­ues to ad­vo­cate for a so­ci­ety free of vi­o­lence. It has al­so de­vot­ed to cre­at­ing safer com­mu­ni­ties, and cam­paigns to raise aware­ness on gen­der- based vi­o­lence. It tran­scends age, abil­i­ty, sta­tus, race, eth­nic­i­ty, ed­u­ca­tion, na­tion­al­i­ty, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or re­li­gion as both women and men from all walks of life are af­fect­ed. The In Her Shoes ex­hi­bi­tion chal­lenges the si­lence. It serves to em­pow­er those who are still alive to make the de­ci­sion to leave. It in­forms each that it is pos­si­ble to be­gin again and be re­stored and in­ac­tion is nev­er an op­tion.