RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

In­no­va­tion and in­ven­tion are tout­ed as so­lu­tions to di­ver­si­fy T&T’s econ­o­my and di­rec­tor of the Lego Club of T&T Ter­rence Fran­cois be­lieves sup­port­ing the cre­ations among youths will fos­ter en­tre­pre­neur­ial cre­ativ­i­ty in the fu­ture.

He was speak­ing at the Gulf City shop­ping com­plex in La Ro­maine on Sat­ur­day where dozens of Lego builders dis­played their skills.

The par­tic­i­pants as young as five years had a range of dis­plays. Among these were Savar­na Balka­ran, who built a Snow White Cas­tle, and Ari Jo­gie, who built a buck­et wheel ex­ca­va­tor.

Fran­cois, who plans to open a south­ern club at the Cre­ative Arts Cen­tre in San Fer­nan­do on Feb­ru­ary 24 said he was blown away by the lev­el of en­thu­si­asm by Lego fans.

In com­mem­o­ra­tion of In­ter­na­tion­al Lego Day the group reg­is­tered 50 plus par­tic­i­pants from as far as Diego Mar­tin and deep south, Fran­cois said.

He said the Le­gos sets are bought by the own­ers and some Lego mod­els took years to build.

Say­ing Le­gos were now be­ing used as a teach­ing tool in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, Fran­cois said, “Lego def­i­nite­ly does some­thing to your mind. Oth­er than build­ing mo­tor and com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills, Le­gos build con­fi­dence, pa­tience and fo­cus on chil­dren.”

Say­ing T&T need­ed its own in­ven­tors and en­gi­neers, Fran­cois said build­ing Lego mod­els will go a long way to­wards in­creas­ing in­no­va­tion and in­ven­tion in T&T as it cov­ers the sub­ject ar­eas of math­e­mat­ics and sci­ence in par­tic­u­lar physics.

Cur­rent­ly, the club has 25 mem­bers but Fran­cois said they planned to take Le­gos to schools.

“We will al­so have a Lego car­a­van in Ju­ly where we will go to all com­mu­ni­ties in Trinidad and in­tro­duce Le­gos,” he said.

Fran­cois said he ben­e­fit­ed from build­ing with Le­gos as a child and he suc­cess­ful­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in com­pe­ti­tions.

“I know that Le­gos helped me and I want­ed to give back to this gen­er­a­tion so that’s why I start­ed the club,” Fran­cois said.

Even though he does not have chil­dren of his own, Fran­cois said he has many adopt­ed chil­dren who have ben­e­fit­ed from Lego blocks. He called on cor­po­rate T&T to sup­port Lego, adding that the Gov­ern­ment should al­so take an in­ter­est in in­tro­duc­ing Lego in schools.

Mean­while, trans­mis­sion tech­ni­cian Kei­th Pan­do­hie who built a mov­ing crawler crane out of 4,000-plus Lego tech­nic pieces said he was al­so will­ing to teach stu­dents Lego con­struc­tion.

Un­like Fran­cois, Pan­do­hie said his par­ents could not af­ford to buy him Lego sets so he wait­ed un­til he was an adult to af­ford to his hob­by.

Say­ing the cheap­est Lego is about US$300, Pan­do­hie said he got his first tech­nic Lego set 10 years ago.

“I saw in a mag­a­zine a Lego trac­tor and tow truck and I wait­ed for two years un­til my mom went to the States to buy it. My first Lego was a red ex­ca­va­tor and a cher­ry pick­er. Now I’ve built a ful­ly mo­torised crawler crane. Like Fran­cois, Pan­do­hie called on Gov­ern­ment to sup­port the Lego club and in­tro­duce Le­gos in schools as part of the in­no­va­tion and in­ven­tion cur­ricu­lum.