Stu­dents from 20 sec­ondary schools will com­pete to­mor­row for a place in the fi­nals of this year's Courts Bo­cas Speak Out In­ter­col.

On­ly 12 com­peti­tors will go through to the fi­nal next week, March 11. The win­ner will be the Courts Bo­cas 2016 Sec­ondary Schools Spo­ken Word cham­pi­on.

A re­lease said the ex­cit­ing cham­pi­onship comes af­ter a three-part na­tion­wide tour­ing sea­son of work­shops, per­for­mance and com­pe­ti­tions, spon­sored by Courts, that start­ed last Sep­tem­ber and has in­volved over 25,000 sec­ondary school­child­ren in over 50 schools.

The stu­dents have been ex­posed to this pop­u­lar style of self-ex­pres­sion through vis­it­ing per­for­mance po­ets of the 2 Cents Move­ment as part of an on-go­ing Bo­cas Lit Fest project to help young peo­ple ac­quire per­son­al de­vel­op­men­tal and cre­ative lan­guage skills that con­tribute to re­al­is­ing their over­all hu­man po­ten­tial.

"We are try­ing to en­gen­der an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of all forms of self-ex­pres­sion through the writ­ten and spo­ken words, among peo­ple of all ages. And peo­ple come to re­alise that they can have great fun do­ing it," says Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, founder of T&T's lit­er­ary fes­ti­val, the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, which takes place April 27 to May 1 and is now in its sixth year.

Nicole Loney Mills, speak­ing on be­half of Courts, spon­sors of the project for the last three years, as­serts: "We be­lieve in sup­port­ing the work of Bo­cas and the dy­nam­ic young po­ets of the 2 Cents Move­ment who are fine ex­po­nents of this genre of per­for­mance that al­lows young peo­ple to ar­tic­u­late their thoughts cre­ative­ly."

"The arts have great pow­er to heal and shape," adds Bo­cas Youth Out­reach Co­or­di­na­tor and founder of the 2 Cents Move­ment Jean Claude Cour­nand.

"We are very ex­cit­ed that, work­ing with Bo­cas, we have ini­ti­at­ed projects to build youth en­gage­ment. The ob­jec­tive is to see that trans­late in­to all ar­eas of young peo­ple's lives," he said.

MORE IN­FO

Both semi­fi­nals and fi­nals are open to the pub­lic and free.

Semis: 9 am � 11 am

& 12.30 pm � 2.30 pm, to­mor­row.

Fi­nals: 10 am � 12 pm,

11 March.

Venue: Daa­ga Hall,

UWI, St Au­gus­tine.

For fur­ther in­fo check www.bo­caslit­fest.com