The St Mary's Chil­dren's Home, Raf­fa House for Boys and Cyril Ross Chil­dren's Home were re­cip­i­ents of crick­et gear spon­sored by in­vesTT Lim­it­ed last week. Dur­ing the hand­ing-over cer­e­mo­ny, sev­er­al chil­dren from Raf­fa House for Boys met crick­et leg­ends Herchelle Gibbs, An­drew Puttick, Loots Bosman and Justin Kemp. The crick­eters were part of the Gan­ga's All Star XI Team dur­ing the In­ter­na­tion­al Twen­ty 20 for 50 crick­et fes­ti­val. Ot­to Patrick, deputy man­ag­er, St Mary's Chil­dren's Home, said he was hap­py to re­ceive the gear. "We have a very vi­brant sport­ing pro­gramme in which we try to ex­pose each child to at least two sport­ing dis­ci­plines for the aca­d­e­m­ic year. We have been plan­ning to reg­is­ter for the up­com­ing Pri­ma­ry School's Crick­et league, so the kids will have some­thing to work to­wards."

Patrick said the home has among its crick­eters one fe­male in Na­tal­ie Mo­hammed who is 14 years old and re­cent­ly took part in the Min­istry of Sports Sum­mer Camp. She was vot­ed one of the most promis­ing play­ers in her age group. Dar­rel Mo­hammed, a 15-year-old all-rounder from Raff House who has been play­ing crick­et for the past three (3) years, cred­its his fa­ther for ig­nit­ing his pas­sion for the game. He is sought af­ter by many clubs and is no stranger to play­ing with the big boys. He will un­doubt­ed­ly ben­e­fit from the gear as his pas­sion for the game con­tin­ues.

In­vesTT is Trinidad and To­ba­go's Na­tion­al Pro­mo­tion Agency un­der the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try whose man­date is to grow the non-oil and gas sec­tor. Key to this is build­ing the cadre of skilled labour need­ed to dri­ve the tar­get­ed sec­tors-Clean Tech­nolo­gies, Cre­ative Arts, In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT), Light Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Mar­itime In­dus­tries.