Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Grav­i­ty Rac­ing As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (GRATT) launched the first-ever Box Cart In­ter­Col last Fri­day at the Ken­neth S. Julien Build­ing of the En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Box Cart rac­ing, as old­er gen­er­a­tions of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans would re­mem­ber, was a cre­ative, fun-filled com­mu­ni­ty ac­tiv­i­ty (and pos­si­bly the cause of a cou­ple of “white-man” on knees and el­bows). GRATT’s mis­sion, how­ev­er, is to use this old-school tra­di­tion to ex­cite young peo­ple about STREAM (Sci­ence, Re­search, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing, Art and Math).

Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St. Au­gus­tine, Dr Bheshem Ram­lal re­calls grow­ing up in Siparia and rac­ing box carts. “We used to make them with wheel bear­ings and we used to go down the hill and crash very of­ten be­cause we didn’t have brak­ing sys­tems.” He fur­ther hailed the new, and much safer it­er­a­tion of Box Cart rac­ing as an ex­cel­lent op­por­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents to be cre­ative and use their prob­lem-solv­ing skills. “You have a lot more tech­nol­o­gy and a lot more op­por­tu­ni­ty to use re­sources and of course your skill sets,” Dr. Ram­lal said.

GRATT ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Re­nee Howard-John­son urged stu­dents to not on­ly think of the tech­ni­cal as­pects. “Every­thing that you do and ex­plore comes from cre­ativ­i­ty and the way in which you sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly look at the prob­lem and come up with so­lu­tions,” she said.