Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Cre­ative bon­nets, hats and out­fits were on dis­play as the Flam­boy­ant Move­ment held its first East­er Bon­net com­pe­ti­tion at the Har­ris Prom­e­nade in San Fer­nan­do on Sat­ur­day.

Fam­i­lies gath­ered at the band­stand for the event, which fea­tured par­tic­i­pants rang­ing from ba­bies to young adults, all show­cas­ing a va­ri­ety of colour­ful and cre­ative de­signs in a live­ly at­mos­phere.

De­spite gen­er­al chal­lenges with spon­sor­ship, the group’s co-founder, Va­lerie Al­leyne-Nor­eiga, said the event was or­gan­ised to give chil­dren—and even par­ents—a space to en­joy them­selves, while al­so at­tract­ing fam­i­lies from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try.

“Most ar­eas are hav­ing East­er hunts. We felt that the chil­dren love to dress up, and the par­ents love to dress up chil­dren, so we de­cid­ed to do the hats, bon­nets and gar­ments. We al­so have a sec­tion for nat­ur­al - pa­per and re­cy­clables,” Al­leyne-Nor­eiga said.

She said they are work­ing to­wards mak­ing the event an an­nu­al one and an­tic­i­pates that it would at­tract even more at­ten­dees in the fu­ture.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris com­mend­ed the Flam­boy­ant Move­ment for its role in re­vi­tal­is­ing the prom­e­nade, not­ing that ini­tia­tives like this help to bring ac­tiv­i­ty to the city and sup­port tourism and small busi­ness­es, even amid dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times.

“We could have had this fur­ther up the prom­e­nade, but we de­cid­ed to come where the orig­i­nal band­stand is and where the last train to San Fer­nan­do is. This area we call the last train stop, and this area has cer­tain­ly brought a lot of tourism to the city San Fer­nan­do,” Par­ris said.

Not­ing that the goal is to boost tourism in the city, he said the coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times.

“The thing is we can con­tin­ue to do small things for the small and mi­cro en­ter­prise per­sons and cer­tain­ly, we based it around tourism and events like these cer­tain­ly bring peo­ple to­wards sup­port­ing small and mi­cro busi­ness­es.”