Di­a­ton­ic Pan In­sti­tute of Mary Street, Siparia, staged its first Va­ca­tion Pan Class­es and held a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny on Au­gust 10 af­ter a month of train­ing which be­gan on Ju­ly 9.

The class­es were open to chil­dren six to 12 years old and was "an ex­treme­ly en­rich­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for all par­tic­i­pants," Di­a­ton­ic said in a press re­lease.

"Youth de­vel­op­ment is pri­ma­ry con­cern of the in­sti­tute and the re­sults of the pan class­es were ex­treme­ly re­ward­ing," the re­lease said.

Di­a­ton­ic al­so used the ses­sions to de­vel­op its youth mem­bers and the class­es were ad­min­is­tered by its vice cap­tain, 19-year-old Sum­mer Balka­ran and five oth­er mem­bers who are still at­tend­ing sec­ondary school, as tu­tor as­sis­tants.

It was the first time Di­a­ton­ic charged par­tic­i­pants for tu­tor­ing as pre­vi­ous­ly it of­fered all of it com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices for free.

The band said it was "com­pelled to tag a cost to these class­es in an ef­fort to em­ploy a com­pe­tent chil­dren tu­tor Roland 'Moose' Joseph, and to pay his as­sis­tants and ad­min­is­tra­tor."

The class­es fo­cused on the prac­ti­cal as­pects of play­ing pan, the rudi­ments of mu­sic and dis­ci­pline.

The band said that due to the big de­mand for its pro­grammes, and in recog­ni­tion of the part steel­band plays in aca­d­e­m­ic and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment, it will in­tro­duce a mi­nors' pro­gramme.

The pro­gramme is geared to­wards in­flu­enc­ing chil­dren at a very ear­ly age and to cre­ate a plat­form for fu­ture suc­cess.

Di­a­ton­ic said it hopes the rel­e­vant Gov­ern­ment min­istries will be­come in­volved in sup­port­ing its pro­grammes so it can of­fer free class­es, in­clu­sive of all an­cil­lary items.

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