So­ca king Machel Mon­tano yes­ter­day re­turned to his Al­ma Mater, Siparia Boys’ RC School, tak­ing 65 tablets for dis­ad­van­taged stu­dents.

It was the first time that Mon­tano had vis­it­ed the school in over 20 years. It was while there he had won the Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch in 1985 with the song Too Young to So­ca, the cat­a­lyst for his rise to star­dom.

Pranc­ing on the hop­scotch box­es in the court­yard, Mon­tano said he was amazed that the school had re­mained ex­act­ly as he re­mem­bered it from his child­hood years. He walked in­to his favourite class­room and even sat down on the wob­bly desk singing his ju­nior ca­lyp­so hit.

Ac­com­pa­nied by his moth­er Eliz­a­beth, Mon­tano said he felt it was im­por­tant to give back to the school which had shaped his life.

“To­day we are com­ing to­geth­er to an­swer the call of the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter, who asked cor­po­rate cit­i­zens to help out stu­dents in need with tablets and lap­tops to fa­cil­i­tate this COVID-19 chal­lenge of home­school­ing and on­line school­ing,” Mon­tano said.

He ex­plained that the Machel Mon­tano Foun­da­tion for Great­ness de­cid­ed to con­tribute to four schools which had played a spe­cial part in his life.

“Apart from as­sist­ing Siparia Boys’ RC, we al­so as­sist­ed the Macaulay Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, the Care­nage Girls’ Pri­ma­ry School, Care­nage is where I was born and the To­co Sec­ondary School, be­cause To­co is where I now live,” Mon­tano said.

Say­ing it was im­por­tant for chil­dren to not get lost with their ed­u­ca­tion, Mon­tano said cit­i­zens must work to­geth­er to help every­one.

“We must meet tech­nol­o­gy and com­bat this chal­lenge. It takes a vil­lage to raise a child. The com­mu­ni­ty on a wide scale must chip in and give the stu­dents the as­sis­tance, fix­tures and de­vices they de­serve,” he said.

He added that de­spite the pe­ri­od of COVID-19, there was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow.

“T&T is a na­tion root­ed in cul­ture just as much as it is root­ed in oil. It takes mo­ments like this to no­tice what Car­ni­val is, what is Eid, Di­vali, chut­ney, so­ca, pan to the bal­ance of our coun­try,” he added.

Ad­mit­ting that many en­ter­tain­ers were feel­ing the pinch of a loss of in­come, Mon­tano said he was cer­tain that the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try will con­tin­ue to flour­ish.

“With­in our en­ter­tain­ment spaces, we are help­ing each oth­er fi­nan­cial­ly and emo­tion­al­ly. We are cre­at­ing farm­ing and by-prod­ucts for each oth­er. This is the in­spi­ra­tion for each oth­er. As things progress, there is a lot of col­lab­o­ra­tion. Artists need a place to set up stu­dios, it is kind of a barter sys­tem now where we help each oth­er,” Mon­tano said.

He said al­though many be­lieved that Car­ni­val 2021 was off, this was not the case.

“Car­ni­val as we know it might be off but the Car­ni­val we nev­er dreamed of will be on. There are ways to utilise a vir­tu­al space, on­line with COVID pro­to­cols in mind,” he said.

Mon­tano added that the T&T peo­ple were re­silient and they will not al­low COVID-19 to take away their liveli­hood.

“They will find ways to cope. This is a time when we have to em­brace tech­nol­o­gy and keep the safe­ty of hu­mans in mind. That could on­ly bring pros­per­i­ty to us, so 2020 will be the cat­a­lyst of ex­port­ing cul­ture on a mass scale,” he said.

Blue Wa­ters brand man­ag­er Nico­las Ben­gochea, who was al­so on hand, agreed that ne­ces­si­ty was the moth­er of in­ven­tion.

“This has giv­en us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work to­geth­er and we see the in­vest­ment in stu­dents as im­por­tant, so as­sist­ing with shar­ing tech­nol­o­gy is some­thing we are more than hap­py to do,” Ben­gochea said.

Uni­com­er (Trinidad) Lim­it­ed’s Clive Fletch­er al­so pledged sup­port and said they will con­tin­ue as­sist­ing stu­dents in need across the coun­try.