Repe­rio Caribbean took its sec­ond stu­dent trip to the French West In­di­an is­land of Guade­loupe. Repe­rio Caribbean Ren­con­tres Guade­loupe 2 took place from 9 Ju­ly 2011 to 16 Ju­ly 2011. Fifty-five stu­dents from Bish­op Anstey (East), Bish­op Anstey (Port-of-Spain), Fa­ti­ma Col­lege, St. Joseph's Con­vent (Port-of-Spain), and St. Joseph's Con­vent (San Fer­nan­do) trav­elled to Guade­loupe to im­prove their French and to play their part in break­ing the lan­guage bar­ri­ers of the Caribbean. Repe­rio Caribbean is a stu­dent project of Trinidad and To­ba­go Shut­tle Ser­vices that helps Caribbean stu­dents take ad­van­tage of present cross-bor­der op­por­tu­ni­ties among the is­lands. More im­por­tant­ly, Repe­rio Caribbean in­spires them to cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for them­selves.

In de­liv­er­ing on these ob­jec­tives, the pro­gramme is fo­cused on strength­en­ing re­la­tions be­tween stu­dents of Trinidad and To­ba­go and their Caribbean coun­ter­parts, through stronger part­ner­ships with ed­u­ca­tion­al es­tab­lish­ments across the re­gion and their re­spec­tive Min­istries of Ed­u­ca­tion and Tourism. This will ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult in the fa­cil­i­ta­tion of cul­tur­al work­shops and ex­change pro­grammes. Repe­rio Caribbean is not on­ly mul­ti­cul­tur­al in its ap­proach, but it is al­so mul­ti­lin­gual so par­tic­i­pat­ing stu­dents are ex­pect­ed to mas­ter at least one for­eign lan­guage. Cur­rent­ly, the pro­gramme is trilin­gual in fo­cus: Eng­lish, French and Span­ish.

Here are some com­ments made by par­ents and stu­dents on the pre­vi­ous trip:

"Our daugh­ter, Olivia, of St Au­gus­tine Girls' High School, was lucky to be part of the group vis­it­ing Guade­loupe. We had high ex­pec­ta­tions of this trip for our daugh­ter and it cer­tain­ly bore fruit. She learnt to be in­de­pen­dent as well as to be part of a group, sup­port­ing and look­ing out for each oth­er" - Dr and Mrs Pe­ter Bag­gan – Par­ents.

"I'm just send­ing this e-mail to say thank you for a love­ly ex­pe­ri­ence this past week. It was re­al­ly en­joy­able and in­for­ma­tive with re­spect to Guade­loupe cul­ture. It was tru­ly a week well spent as I was al­so able to meet new peo­ple and make new friends. This is a re­al­ly great ini­tia­tive and I re­al­ly hope the fu­ture trips are as suc­cess­ful as, or even more suc­cess­ful than this one" - Re­nee Mar­tin – Stu­dent.

"I thank you for in­tro­duc­ing Ren­con­tres Guade­loupe 1 to our schools here in Trinidad. My daugh­ter Ce­leste en­joyed her trip. It was a won­der­ful and learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for her and I am sure the oth­er girls shared the same with their par­ents. Every day I am hear­ing about a lit­tle of Guade­loupe. Her pho­tographs are beau­ti­ful. I thank you once again." -Theodo­ra Lib­ert – Par­ent.

"I must say thank you for tak­ing care of the girls and par­tic­u­lar­ly Sar­ra-Kezia Adams. The trip was a won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence for her and she anx­ious­ly looks for­ward to next