 Welcome to the Government Information Services Weekend Review. I am Jacking St. Compton. St. Lucia Carnival came to a close on July 19, 2016. Launched May 15, nearly two months of activities came to an end with the national two-day parade of the bands and castries. Regional contingencies from Martinique, Guadeloupe and Trinidad joined the 11 St. Lucia bands that assembled within the city for the annual spectacle. Labry Steel Orchestra led by Quill Barfelmi etched out three-time Panorama winners PanTime to win the title at the annual Panorama competition. The Calypso Monarch saw last year's Victor Wally dethroned by three-time Monarch Menel. The Soka Monarch Finals held on July 17 saw Eileman taking home the power Soka Crown for his performance of Mad Mad and Arthur taking home the groovy Soka Crown for his performance of Dat Beat. Meanwhile, the Royal St. Lucia Police Force have thanked the general public for acting responsibly throughout the 2016 Carnival celebrations. As of July 21, 2016, the Beaus-Ageau Cricket Stadium will be henceforth known as the Darren Sammy Cricket Grounds. It is not by chance that the last two tournaments won by the West Indies male team have been under your astute stewardship. It is certainly not a coincidence that the prominence of another St. Lucia Cricket in the person of Johnson Charles to the West Indies fame and hopefully fortune is a consequence of the path that you have created. It is this capacity to mold, motivate and inspire that will be the biggest legacy that you will leave. You both have served as role models and leaders within our country at a time when we need such personalities. You have and will continue to shape the minds of our youth giving direction and meaning to them. They can relate to you just as they love you and just as we all do. I'm truly humbled and blessed for this occasion and hopefully the first game, no disrespect to the Patriots team. The first game in the Darren Sammy stadium will be a victory. I also want to congratulate my teammate Johnson Charles. I paved the way for St. Lucia in international cricket and won some inspiration for guys like Johnson and other young sportsmen and women in St. Lucia to follow and to believe that they could achieve their dreams no matter what. I think I'll be happy with my contribution to this country. The Minister for Tourism and Information and Broadcasting, the Honourable Dominic Fede, has introduced the new Board of Directors of the St. Lucia Tourist Board. At a meeting held on the morning of July 21, 2016, the Minister met with the new board and introduced them to invited media. It is my pleasure indeed to introduce to you a team of people that have no doubt that I am of no doubt that are very committed to the development of this industry and St. Lucia. I think it would be only fitting that I start off to mention historically that for the first time in St. Lucia we do have a female that is heading the tourist board. We have our new chairperson of the board, Agnes Francis, who has been a general of the industry. She is no stranger to tourism. She also holds the distinction of having served in the industry as its first female tourism director many years ago when she served at the St. Lucia Tourist Board. So Agnes has a way of breaking records. So we're hoping that in this new role and we have no doubt that she will break even more records. So congratulations Agnes and we're all very proud of you. But Agnes is ably assisted by a group of people to my left who have come here today in their own show of support for the country's redevelopment of tourism. New chair Mrs. Francis will be assisted by six other members of the board who come from various backgrounds. They include Sanovic Destang, president of the St. Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association, or SLHTA, Celestine Laure, Carmelita Xavier, Nathan Chassang, Mark Mirage and Winston Anderson. The meeting took place at the St. Lucia Tourist Board headquarters at Vidbutte. Minister for Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, the Honourable Dr. Gail Rigobut attends Monrobo Primary School graduation ceremony. Graduating students are being encouraged to take pride in their school and reflect positive behaviour in their learning experience. Minister for Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, the Honourable Dr. Gail Rigobut echoed these words recently to primary school leavers within the Mikudov constituency. Dr. Rigobut called on students of the Mikud Primary School to take full advantage of the learning environment. What is very rare and unfortunately rare is discipline, is what we call good manners, respect, understanding protocol, context, appreciating one another and showing compassion. I don't know, Madam Principal, that these things are explicitly spelled out in a formal curriculum, but I trust that inadvertently that these young graduates would have benefitted from that teaching experience, that learning experience of compassion, good manners, respect for one another, appreciation, gratitude. The Minister also called on graduates of the Mikud Combined School to embrace the new chapter of their life and to overcome challenges faced with. Your foundational years were here. No matter how far you go, no matter what you achieve tomorrow, all of that will be possible because of the solid, rich, holistic foundation that you had laid for you at this, the Monopole Combined School. The graduates were challenged to fry for success and to give back to the school and community. Reporting from the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, I am Fenel Neptune. The Caribbean Development Bank met with the Ministry of Education to discuss matters of finance. We have more in this report. Government has given its blessing for the continuation of an education project funded by the Caribbean Development Bank CDB, which will focus on the rehabilitation of some of the physical infrastructure of schools on the island and started under the former administration. The CDB required such an authorization in order to finalize the project, which will also focus strongly on much-needed development of the special education sector on the island with special emphasis on institutional strengthening and capacity building. Portfolio Manager for CDB's Social Sector Division, Dr. Ida May Denny, is one of two CDB representatives who recently met to discuss the scope of the project with Minister for Education Honorable Dr. Gail Rigabet along with top officials of the ministry. We are going to structure the components in such a way. We are going to sequence them in such a way that we can begin the actual project implementation very shortly after approval. Because we have some schools in there that are a holdover from the last project, we would have supported the basic education enhancement project. And we have all of the design work and the costings for those, so we can begin with those very quickly. Minister for Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development Honorable Dr. Gail Rigabet is particularly heartened by the special needs component of the project and intervention for children at risk within the education sector. So we recognize that the education of our young people is a holistic endeavor, that yes, we ought to pay attention to the delivery of a formal curriculum, but that the well-being of our students expand well into the emotional and psychological realm as well. Another component of the program will help rehabilitate the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, which is in the process of being transformed into a university college. The CDB project, which also includes components for preventative maintenance of schools as well as training for teachers in specific areas of special education and ICT is expected to take four years to be fully implemented. From the communications unit of the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, I am Chris Satney reporting. Meanwhile, a CDB delegation led by Dr. William Warren Smith, President of the Caribbean Development Bank, recently met with senior government officials, including Prime Minister the Honorable Allen M. Shastney, Cabinet Ministers and members of the public sector. Dr. Smith described the visit as one which would help reinforce the CDB's commitment to St. Lucia by offering assistance in creative ways that would help the country achieve its development goals. The meeting today was an opportunity for us to first of all look at the relationship between the bank and St. Lucia to examine some of the projects that we have here, projects that are ongoing and also projects that are in the pipeline and also to look at possible other opportunities down the road. That was one of the principal discussion points during the meeting today. The other discussion centered around the desire of the Prime Minister to do an examination of the state of play here in St. Lucia, to do a diagnostic as he put it, to examine the country's circumstances from a fiscal point of view, the debt position and also the possibilities for growth. So we talked about how the CDB might be able to assist along with some of the other development partners and an entity like the East Caribbean Central Bank, all of whom are very close partners of the Caribbean Development Bank as they are of St. Lucia. So that the objective is to get to have a better understanding of the Prime Minister and his government's objectives for this country, their objectives in relation to improving economic circumstances and helping to drive greater prosperity amongst the people of this country. Prime Minister, the Honourable Alan Shastney believes that the meeting served as a step in the right direction. This is a very important day for us as a new government and it is about the partnerships that already exist and to gain confidence in the policies of the government is to allow them to be scrutinized. There's nothing to hide. I mean, here are what our ideas are, here's what the numbers are saying. If somebody has a better way to be able to make it work, then we're interested in listening to those. But what we're not going to do is procrastinate. What we're doing now is not working and we need to be able to move forward. The meeting took place at the conference centre of the Ministry of Finance, Bridge Street, Castries. The Pro-Vice Chancellor and the Principal of the UE Open campus states that there is a thrust to improve processes and facilities within the university. The Pro-Vice Chancellor and the Principal Luz Longsworth were speaking in reference to the upcoming UE Global Giving Week scheduled to take place in August of this year. She stated that funds raised will go towards improving the institute. The world is changing rapidly right in front of us and the traditional careers are still of course very important. The medicine, law, engineering and the university has really been outstanding in those areas. But we have new emerging areas in our economy, very interesting things. For example, sports as a career, animation, social media, new media generally. New areas of technology that the university has to equip itself to be able to provide the necessary training for our young people. And so we do need an injection now of new capital to ensure that we're able to add those facilities, upgrade our facilities. The UE Global Giving Week takes place between August 1 to August 7, 2016. And that's the latest news from the Government Information Service. I am Shaq Kingston Compton.