Kali­fa Clyne

It's a her­culean task, but one small pri­ma­ry school in Cas­cade is at­tempt­ing to raise a vast amount of mon­ey so that it doesn't have to re­lo­cate. Di­rec­tor of the Holis­tic Pri­ma­ry School, Dr Pa­tri­cia Dar­d­aine-Ragguet, al­so called Dr Pat, says the school ur­gent­ly needs funds to pur­chase the build­ing it has called home for the last four years. The school ac­com­mo­dates 165 pupils, a far cry from when it be­gan ten years ago as a pre-school, with on­ly ten.

What is a holis­tic school?

Like reg­u­lar pri­ma­ry schools, it of­fers the tra­di­tion­al sub­jects such as maths, Eng­lish, sci­ence etc. How­ev­er, sub­jects such as vi­su­al and per­form­ing arts, Span­ish, French, sign lan­guage and af­ter-school pro­grammes such as chess, gym­nas­tics, African drum­ming and swim­ming are al­so in­clud­ed in its cur­ricu­lum. The school al­so has a mu­sic pro­gramme that trains pupils on string in­stru­ments like the vi­o­lin, cel­lo and vi­o­la. Dr Pat said all pupils in T&T should have ac­cess to these types of pro­grammes. "It is im­por­tant that all our chil­dren have a well-round­ed ed­u­ca­tion, or what will re­sult is grad­u­ates com­ing for­ward that are bare­ly lit­er­ate. "Peo­ple choose our school be­cause we ed­u­cate the whole child, we look at the so­cial, spir­i­tu­al, emo­tion­al, cre­ative and in­tel­lec­tu­al per­son," said Dr Pat. With this in mind, school staff have made it their man­date to bring these pro­grammes to pupils who wouldn't or­di­nar­i­ly have ac­cess, through com­mu­ni­ty projects.

En­gag­ing the pub­lic

In 2004, the school in­tro­duced a Read­ing in Key pro­gramme and free art, mu­sic and dra­ma work­shops at Nalis. It al­so col­lab­o­rat­ed with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), Cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, the US Em­bassy and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly in a De­vel­op­ing Healthy Com­mu­ni­ties project, which fa­cil­i­tat­ed free one-week arts work­shops to pupils from Black Rock, Ma­son Hall and De­laford, To­ba­go. This project al­so ed­u­cat­ed pupils about the HIV/Aids pan­dem­ic through the play Cir­cles, writ­ten by Son­ja Du­mas. In Jan­u­ary last year the school part­nered with First Cit­i­zens As­set Man­age­ment, the Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts at the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, the Caribbean Chil­dren's Foun­da­tion and the Em­bassy of the King­dom of the Nether­lands to pro­vide mu­sic-ed­u­ca­tion schol­ar­ships on strings for pub­lic-school pupils whose fam­i­lies would not have been able to af­ford lessons on their own. Dr Pat de­scribed the Holis­tic Pri­ma­ry School as a pri­vate school with a pub­lic mis­sion. "The mis­sion is to cre­ate holis­tic ed­u­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum to share with the pub­lic schools in T&T," she said. "In T&T we don't in­vest enough in ed­u­ca­tion. There must be a greater in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion to achieve so­cial peace. "You can't have po­lice for every cit­i­zen. In or­der to fight crime, we must work to make sure our chil­dren are well ground­ed."

The task

This year, the school is fac­ing a ma­jor hur­dle. The own­ers of the Cas­cade prop­er­ty the school has been us­ing are ready to sell but the school does not have the funds to buy. "The own­ers have been very gra­cious, since we have nev­er been able to af­ford our own build­ing and grounds for the school, but our grace pe­ri­od is over, and we need to pur­chase by Au­gust of this year, or re­lo­cate," said Dr Pat. Al­though the school has sought help from the Gov­ern­ment as well as cor­po­rate spon­sors, it is still mak­ing every ef­fort to raise funds on its own. As a fund-rais­ing event, the school will present Her­cules, an­oth­er play for young peo­ple by Son­ja Du­mas, at the Lit­tle Carib The­atre in Wood­brook. Her­cules is loose­ly based on the sto­ry of the 12 tasks of the mytho­log­i­cal Grae­co-Ro­man de­mi-god Her­cules. The sto­ry is set in the myth­i­cal Caribbean vil­lage of Sea & Sun, and tells of a lit­tle boy who was born to a high-rank­ing thug in the vil­lage and who faces many chal­lenges along the way to man­hood. The play will be per­formed by the Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts stu­dents from the Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts of UTT. The stu­dents al­so pro­duced, di­rect­ed and cre­at­ed orig­i­nal mu­sic and move­ment for the pro­duc­tion.