Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Re­porter

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

The Red Cross Chil­dren’s Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee hopes to cel­e­brate its 70th an­niver­sary in 2026 by rais­ing enough funds to pur­chase an am­bu­lance. The an­nu­al chil­dren’s car­ni­val is a ma­jor fundrais­ing ini­tia­tive, and chair­man Ronald Halfhide said the com­mit­tee must first se­cure an es­ti­mat­ed $500,000 to host next year’s pa­rade.

He said the pro­ject­ed cost in­cludes sev­er­al dig­i­tal up­grades in­tend­ed to make the event more ef­fi­cient, al­low­ing con­tes­tants to re­ceive im­me­di­ate re­sults and bet­ter nav­i­gate the pa­rade route and com­pe­ti­tion sched­ule. Planned im­prove­ments in­clude the in­stal­la­tion of dig­i­tal screens and a tran­si­tion from pa­per to dig­i­tal pro­grammes.

Halfhide said the com­mit­tee has be­gun en­gag­ing po­ten­tial spon­sors ear­ly.

“We start­ing at ze­ro. We start­ing with no mon­ey, and the es­ti­mat­ed cost for pro­duc­ing a show like that is up to about $500,000,” he said. He added that even when items or ser­vices are do­nat­ed, the com­mit­tee must as­sign a mon­e­tary val­ue to them as part of prop­er bud­get­ing. The com­mit­tee is al­so still seek­ing a ti­tle spon­sor for the 2026 pa­rade.

Halfhide not­ed that chil­dren’s car­ni­vals have de­clined over the years, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pe­ti­tions that cross the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah stage. He stressed that ju­nior Car­ni­val events serve as in­cu­ba­tors for as­pects of the wider fes­ti­val, nur­tur­ing par­tic­i­pants who even­tu­al­ly tran­si­tion in­to adult com­pe­ti­tions.

How­ev­er, he point­ed out that while many or­gan­ised chil­dren’s bands no longer cross the big stage, com­mu­ni­ty street pa­rades re­main ac­tive and, in some ar­eas, are be­ing rein­tro­duced as part of re­gion­al car­ni­val cal­en­dars.

“If there’s one thing I would like to see hap­pen, it’s that the Diego Mar­tins of this world, the Cou­vas of this world, the St Josephs of this world start de­vel­op­ing their chil­dren’s car­ni­val, be­cause that’s part of our cul­ture,” he said.

The so­ci­ety’s first chil­dren’s car­ni­val was held in 1956 un­der the aus­pices of Pres­i­dent La­dy Is­abel­la Beetham, who es­tab­lished the fundrais­ing com­mit­tee to sup­port the work of the Red Cross branch. The in­au­gur­al event took place un­der the trees at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.