Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Dr Frank Anthony said partnerships created with the private sector and NGOs made Mash 2010 a tremendous success.

Speaking at the Mash 2010 prize giving ceremony at the Umana Yana on Friday, Anthony noted Mashramani this year was better organised and had greater participation.

Republic Bank, Ansa McAl, Banks DIH and Digicel were singled out for their roles in sponsoring various activities and being involved in the float parade.

Meanwhile, the Univer-sity of Guyana, National Museum and Castellani House contributed to Mash by holding different educational activities which sought to have persons reflect on Guyana’s 40 years of achievements. This contribution, Anthony said, was invaluable.

The Ministry of Education also came in for praise for its successful hosting of Children’s Mashramani Com-petition, which was incident free.

The children’s parade saw 40 floats being on the road, a feat which could not be matched by the adults.

To mark the 40th Republic Anniversary, two forms of commemoration are to be launched shortly.

Tomorrow the Guyana Post Office Corporation will launch a 40th anniversary commemorative stamp and within a month, the official magazine of Mashramani will be released.

The evening saw the presentation of prizes to winners in the various categories.  It was a close battle between Olympia Small Sonaram and Trevor Rose for the designer of the year prize, which was awarded to Rose.

The audience was entertained by an energetic dance by members of the National Dance Company to “High” by Melissa ‘Vanilla’ Roberts this year’s Road March Queen and Junior Calypso Monarch Teneicia Defreitas performed her contagious and popular winning calypso piece “I Don’t Want to be Born”.

Anthony anticipates that building on the partnerships of this year and with greater stakeholder involvement, Mash 2011 will be even better.