Charles Kong Soo

Chair­man of the Trans At­lantic Trade and Cul­tur­al Ex­change Pro­gramme Ltd (TAT­CEP), Beville Si­mon­ette, says the Caribbean African Di­as­po­ra-Mod­el African Union As­sem­bly project is the re­sponse to Unit­ed Na­tions sec­re­tary gen­er­al Ban Ki-Moon's call to con­tribute to ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing 2011, which has been des­ig­nat­ed as the In­ter­na­tion­al Year for the Peo­ple of African De­scent.Si­mon­ette, who is al­so co-chair of the Mod­el African Union (MAU) As­sem­bly, made the state­ment on No­vem­ber 16 at the in­au­gur­al launch of the Caribbean African Di­as­po­ra Mod­el African Union As­sem­bly pro­gramme for uni­ver­si­ty and sec­ondary schools at NA­PA in Port-of-Spain.

"The MAU project seeks to sim­u­late the gen­er­al ses­sion of the African Union."Giv­en the di­verse na­ture of our pop­u­lace, the en­tire school pop­u­la­tion is in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in the project," he said.Among the au­di­ence were stu­dents from St Joseph Con­vent San Fer­nan­do, St Stephen's Col­lege, Diego Mar­tin North Sec­ondary, Poly­tech­nic In­sti­tute and Queen's Roy­al Col­lege. "A project that in­te­grates ed­u­ca­tion and cul­ture in so crit­i­cal a fash­ion as this one should right­ful­ly draw the at­ten­tion and sup­port of var­i­ous in­sti­tu­tions such as the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go , the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean," he said.

Si­mon­ette ex­plained that al­most half the pro­gramme had to do with cul­ture, and that his or­gan­i­sa­tion blend­ed acad­e­mia with cul­ture in cre­at­ing the mod­el. The sim­u­lat­ed African Union As­sem­bly will have stu­dents from sec­ondary schools through­out the coun­try rep­re­sent­ing the 54 states in the African Union and oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties will in­clude art, dra­ma, mu­si­cal, culi­nary and cul­tur­al dis­plays and pre­sen­ta­tions.

He said the MAU was a "fan­tas­tic phe­nom­e­non" that had pre­sent­ed it­self to the coun­try, and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion should read­i­ly em­brace the project to the ben­e­fit of the en­tire coun­try. "One should not lim­it their think­ing to­wards a Mod­el African Union and mis­tak­en­ly in­ter­pret that this is an eth­nic, racial or cul­tur­al­ly in­su­lar event," Si­mon­ette said.

"This is a na­tion­al event and it is for all the peo­ple of T&T, Hin­du, Mus­lim, Ro­man Catholic, Bap­tist, Or­isha, white boy, Chi­nese girl, In­di­an man or African youth. "It is for all of us," he con­clud­ed.