SCDF President Edwardo Radjouki.
PHILIPSBURG–Carnival Development Foundation St. Maarten (SCDF) recently elected a new president in the person of 23-year carnival veteran Eduardo Radjouki.
He stated that “Carnival has moved too far from its roots, too far from who we are” and the foundation should refocus on further cultural development of the festival, exclusively in a press release issued by SCDF on Tuesday.
According to the release, Radjouki has been a mainstay in Carnival operations for more than two decades and before that was known as an entertainer who won many King of The Band competitions with his magnificent costume pieces. He said that during his tenure and with the help of a solid team, he intends to reposition the SCDF to focus on its core tasks of developing Carnival through its cultural strengths, thereby rescuing many aspects of the festival that in desperate need of revival. .
A key part of this approach, he explained, is to leave international events to international promoters. “This, above all, is not our main goal. Of course, we want Carnival to continue to be the major economic driver that it is, but not at the expense of our culture and cultural events,” he said.
“We need to know that our culture is strong and alive. The foundation’s mission is to use this vibrant culture to attract visitors to the island and more importantly, showcase the talent and skills we have here. “International acts are welcome at the carnival, but they should complement the culture of the festival, not the other way around,” he continued.
In other words, SCDF will not host any international events, but will leave those concerts to concert promoters. SCDF will instead aim to revive and strengthen cultural events such as the Junior Calypso Competition.
“Youth aspects in the carnival need attention. Junior Calypso, Junior Garant, Youth Extravaganza, Youth Parada have all declined significantly. If we are to reflect on ourselves, we put too much energy and focus on things that others wanted us to do. The SCDF is full of people with significant carnival experience and we need to put that experience to work for our culture before we lose it,” Radjouki said. “It has to start with our young people, not just to make them to participate again, but we need to execute programs that will instill an appreciation for culture and the role Carnival plays in our culture. We have our work cut out for us, but we will be focused.”
He added that he will engage the Department of Culture and all schools to encourage children to be involved in creating costumes to participate in the children’s parade. “Arts and crafts in our schools are important, or as we used to call it ‘handiwork’. Children should be involved in presenting St. Maarten’s culture to the world through their creativity at school. We will work hard in this aspect”, he emphasized.
Radjouki also noted that the foundation will address its challenging financial position following the pandemic and a carnival year in 2022 that was undermined and further complicated by the government’s ill-fated attempt to put the festival up for bid.
“Many people do not understand the importance of what the government did to the foundation. Their efforts literally crippled us financially and we are still dealing with the consequences of that. We have a serious collection of payments to service providers, prize payments to participants and performers – this is a big challenge,” he explained.
“We have communicated to these people that we are working to resolve these arrears and we are confident that our plan moving forward will avoid such pitfalls in the future. We are very grateful for the patience shown to us and I want to assure everyone that we will make good on them in a short time. The foundation had to fight an unplanned battle during and after the carnival,” said Radjouki.
“I don’t want to be misunderstood. Will we work with people who want to use Carnival as a tool to promote St. Maarten? Yes. Will we have international shows? Yes. Are we open to new and creative ideas? Absolutely. But we will elevate our culture even more at the festival. Our Past President did a wonderful job of this with our Cultural Night, Pan Burst, Cultural Parade, Village Cookout and more. Now we focus on revival, improvement and return to who we are”, concluded Radjouki.
The rest of the SCDF board remained largely intact with some reshuffles. Franciane Peterson returns as secretary and Mike Granger as treasurer. The president, treasurer and secretary form the SCDF Executive Board. The remainder of the board consists of immediate past President Alston Lourens, who is now Vice President, with Roland Rommy, Angela Colli, Vida Boyrard, Paula Gordon and Marie Gittens returning as board members. SCDF also welcomed a new associate member on board in the person of long-time Carnival volunteer Renasha Richardson.
The Foundation opened registration for Carnival 2023 in July this year and has already announced the dates for Carnival 2023, which will run from April 14 to May 3, 2023.
The Carnival 2023 schedule will be released in the coming weeks.
