DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The head of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ES­CTT) says this year’s fes­ti­val is again un­der fi­nan­cial strain, as the or­gan­i­sa­tion has yet to re­ceive any con­firmed con­tri­bu­tion from the Gov­ern­ment or even an in­di­ca­tion of how much sup­port it can ex­pect.

“The Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee is a small non-gov­ern­ment not-for-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, and it can­not do this work alone, and we do not want that we have all of this mag­nif­i­cence and then we can­not pay for it,” said ESC ex­ec­u­tive chair Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da dur­ing the of­fi­cial launch of the Lidj Ya­su Omowale Vil­lage on Fri­day night.

This year’s theme is Shap­ing Sus­tain­able Fu­tures Through Repara­to­ry Jus­tice.

“I’m ap­peal­ing not on­ly to our Gov­ern­ment but to our cor­po­rate sec­tor to un­der­stand the val­ue and mag­na­nim­i­ty of what we do. And the pos­i­tive im­pact that it can have on our so­ci­ety. Be­cause eman­ci­pa­tion was not a win just for Africans, it was a win for all hu­man­i­ty,” she added.

In a fol­low-up in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Uzoma-Wada­da re­it­er­at­ed that the ESC has faced the same chal­lenge for years, re­gard­less of which po­lit­i­cal par­ty holds pow­er.

“No, we have not re­ceived any con­tri­bu­tion as yet, and we don’t know what con­tri­bu­tion we will be get­ting. That in­for­ma­tion has not yet been com­mu­ni­cat­ed,” she said.

“It’s noth­ing new. It hap­pens all the time. That has been the run of things with re­spect to this fes­ti­val.”

While the Gov­ern­ment did con­tribute $1.4 mil­lion last year, those funds ar­rived on­ly in Jan­u­ary 2025, months af­ter the fes­ti­val end­ed, and near­ly $1 mil­lion short of what the ESC had bud­get­ed.

“Yes, every year the Gov­ern­ment makes a con­tri­bu­tion, but the chal­lenge re­mains that they do not tell you how much, and there­fore you are just work­ing blind. You’re try­ing to build and grow and make some­thing more beau­ti­ful and build a prod­uct, but we don’t know yet what the fund­ing is go­ing to be like for this year.”

She ex­plained that the ESC sub­mits its bud­get months in ad­vance, yet no al­lo­ca­tion is ever as­sured.

“It’s a na­tion­al fes­ti­val for a na­tion­al hol­i­day that hap­pens an­nu­al­ly for the last sev­en years. And there’s no al­lo­ca­tion for this fes­ti­val.”

Uzoma-Wada­da said this prac­tice needs to change. Still, she re­as­sured the pub­lic that the event is not in dan­ger of be­ing can­celled.

“No, no, it isn’t. Not at all. We have very com­mit­ted ser­vice providers that un­der­stand the chal­lenges, but peo­ple’s un­der­stand­ing can go so far be­cause once peo­ple work, they ex­pect to be paid.”

She al­so ques­tioned the dis­par­i­ty be­tween the ESC’s mod­est fund­ing and the sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er state spend­ing on oth­er ex­hi­bi­tions. She did not dis­close spe­cif­ic fig­ures but in­vit­ed the pub­lic to com­pare.

Be­yond the fi­nances, Uzoma-Wada­da em­pha­sised the deep­er im­por­tance of the fes­ti­val as a ve­hi­cle for cul­tur­al re­new­al and per­son­al em­pow­er­ment.

She high­light­ed the ded­i­ca­tion of ven­dors and artists who con­tin­ue to par­tic­i­pate de­spite lim­it­ed re­sources.

“We have to go to the bank and bor­row mon­ey be­cause we do not get a sub­ven­tion from the or­gan­i­sa­tion, from the min­istry, ei­ther. So, our sur­vival and the sur­vival of the or­gan­i­sa­tion and its staff and so on, you know, al­so de­pends on what hap­pens here.”

For the ESC, the Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions are more than sym­bol­ic. They rep­re­sent an on­go­ing jour­ney to­ward iden­ti­ty, jus­tice and trans­for­ma­tion.

“It is al­so about self-re­con­nect­ing with self. So that we can em­pow­er our­selves and hope­ful­ly trans­form the so­ci­ety.”

Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin, who at­tend­ed the event, praised the com­mit­tee’s com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing African her­itage and shap­ing na­tion­al iden­ti­ty.

“Com­mit­tees like these stand in the gap when we tend to for­get who chose pas­sion and ded­i­ca­tion. They con­tin­ue to breathe life in­to our tra­di­tions, ed­u­cate new gen­er­a­tions, some­thing that is nec­es­sary in so­ci­ety to­day, and keep the fire of cul­tur­al pride burn­ing bright. You en­sure that our sto­ries are not buried or di­lut­ed but passed on from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion with pride and pur­pose.”

The Vil­lage is now alive with rhythm, colour, cul­ture, and pur­pose. Over the next four days, it will host per­for­mances, con­ver­sa­tions, art, food, fash­ion and en­ter­tain­ment all root­ed in a shared lega­cy of re­sis­tance and re­new­al.