Car­ol Quash

As tech­nol­o­gy be­comes more ad­vanced, the like­li­hood that a young per­son will will­ing­ly pick up a pen or pen­cil and write some­thing down is slim. With easy ac­cess to apps that can quick­ly tran­scribe lec­tures and voice notes, who cares about writ­ing and pen­man­ship any­more?

Vanes­sa Lal­loo does! The Cou­va-based hand­writ­ing de­vel­op­ment tu­tor has lit­er­al­ly made it her busi­ness to help chil­dren and some adults im­prove their hand­writ­ing. She has even tak­en it a step fur­ther. For those who are in­ter­est­ed, she in­tro­duces them to cal­lig­ra­phy – the art of “beau­ti­ful writ­ing,” that trans­forms let­ter­ing in­to vi­su­al art us­ing tools like pens, brush­es, or nibs.

“This is my 11th year of tu­tor­ing,” Lal­loo told the Busi­ness Guardian.

What start­ed as some­thing she did as a hob­by while work­ing full time, has now be­come her main source of in­come.

“It was al­ways some­thing that I had liked on the side. But I’ve no­ticed that through­out my life, things on­ly hap­pen for me un­der three years.

“My mar­riage last­ed two and a half years. The jobs that I had last­ed two and a half years, and some­how I al­ways came back to hand­writ­ing.”

Lal­loo had worked a num­ber of cus­tomer ser­vice jobs over the years, but when she be­came Na­tion­al Ex­am­i­na­tion Board in Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health cer­ti­fied, she land­ed a job in the health and safe­ty field.

“And this last time here when I was sent home, that was two and a half years, was like a slap in my face. I told my­self, I am not go­ing to al­low any­one else to em­bar­rass me like this. I have a skill, I have a pur­pose, this is my pas­sion. Re­gard­less of how life pans out, I will find my stu­dents and I will serve my pur­pose. I am go­ing to do this hand­writ­ing for­ev­er.’”

Cal­lig­ra­phy Curves was reg­is­tered in Sep­tem­ber 2021, and with a small in­vest­ment for the ba­sic tools for each stu­dent, she is see­ing growth in the busi­ness.

She be­lieves a good hand­writ­ing is one of the foun­da­tions of a good ed­u­ca­tion, and is nec­es­sary de­spite the many tech­no­log­i­cal tools that are avail­able on the mar­ket that de­ter peo­ple from lay­ing that foun­da­tion.

“There is a strug­gle with some of the chil­dren … There was an ar­ti­cle by the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion some years ago say­ing that chil­dren are not go­ing to be grad­ed based on their hand­writ­ing. You have dis­cour­aged, im­me­di­ate­ly, the hand­writ­ing ef­fect.”

She said while en­cour­ag­ing cre­ative writ­ing, gram­mar, com­po­si­tion and spelling skills, the then min­is­ter was ex­pect­ing the chil­dren to write ex­ams with­out be­ing able to write prop­er­ly.

“Par­ents are con­tin­u­ous­ly reach­ing out and ask­ing for as­sis­tance for their chil­dren, so I do class­es and I al­so do work­shops at the Cou­va li­brary.”

The prob­lem, she said, even­tu­al­ly spills out in­to the wider so­ci­ety.

“I spoke with a sergeant from the po­lice ser­vice just be­fore Car­ni­val and he said he has ju­nior of­fi­cers who do file and fo­lio that goes up to archives, and when some­one goes in to look at it, they can’t un­der­stand what the per­son wrote. So this is the adult part of the sit­u­a­tion.”

Lal­loo said stu­dents can choose to do their class­es vir­tu­al­ly via What­sApp or in-per­son. She pro­vides them with a pouch with all their sup­plies – pen­cils, work­books, pen­cil grips, sharp­en­ers and a phone stand. Stu­dents are al­so giv­en a jour­nal in which they are ex­pect­ed to make en­tries every day for the five weeks of each course in or­der to track their progress.

“You can write any­thing from when you start­ed. ‘How was my ex­pe­ri­ence in class to­day? How did I do to­day? What did I do yes­ter­day?’ You can list the days of the week; any­thing. It’s just so every day you can prac­tice what you learn.”

She starts with ba­sic hand­writ­ing for foun­da­tion­al skills, then moves on to the curly swirlies of cur­sive. This re­quires a dif­fer­ent set of tools, in­clud­ing a foun­tain pen.

“Cur­sive is a font that is tilt­ed slight­ly to the right, 35 or 45 de­gree an­gle, de­pends on the type of print…the end re­sult is a neat and leg­i­ble hand­writ­ing.”

This pre­pares stu­dents for the even­tu­al use of the cal­lig­ra­phy pen with three dif­fer­ent nibs for three dif­fer­ent fonts.

“So when you put that pen on that book on day one, I ex­pect you to fo­cus on your for­ma­tions of those let­ters. And as we move for­ward, we learn more let­ters and then you will fo­cus on those. This is a pro­gres­sive thing.”

Lal­loo said she has al­ways been fas­ci­nat­ed by the in­tri­ca­cies of hand­writ­ing. The for­mer As­ja Girls Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do stu­dent re­calls do­ing posters at sec­ondary school, and buy­ing books and pens to teach her­self cal­lig­ra­phy. As an adult, she be­gan post­ing her work on her Face­book page and it even­tu­al­ly be­came a source of in­come.

“I do lots of wed­ding in­vi­ta­tions and oth­er events. I did some work for TSTT, I do ta­ble num­bers, pro­pos­als, an­niver­sary in­vites, love let­ters. I write on plas­tic, on acrylic, any sur­face you bring to me, I can write on it, Bibles, Qurans.”

Lal­loo would like to ex­tend her reach to in­clude more stu­dents through­out T&T, and has sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al to NALIS to do work­shops at oth­er pub­lic li­braries.

“I re­al­ly want to reach stu­dents who are strug­gling. I’m await­ing ap­proval from NALIS and I am al­so ap­proach­ing oth­er in­sti­tu­tions so that we can look at ex­pand­ing the ser­vice through­out the coun­try.”