Some 3,000 secondary school students will be given a chance to attend the opening ceremony of the Kashif and Shanghai Football Tournament on December 12 at the Guyana National Stadium, compliments of bakery giant, Bakewell.
At a presentation ceremony yesterday in the Boardroom of the Ministry of Education, Bakewell’s CEO Naeem Nasir and General Manager Rajim Ganga handed over 3,000 tickets for the tournament’s opening night to the Minister of Education Shaik Baksh.
This will be the third year that Bakewell will be extending this gesture to the schools, and Nasir affirmed that his company was pleased to once again be in support of this venture that gives something to the students in Guyana. The tickets are expected to be distributed to several secondary schools across Guyana.
This is not Bakewell’s only input into the tournament as they are already sponsoring two of the participating teams – Bakewell Topp XX and Bakewell Buxton Stars. Moreover, Bakewell is one of the sponsors of the tournament.
Baksh pledged that the ministry will distribute the tickets as widely as possible, but he noted that it would not be logical to distribute tickets to the far-flung communities outside of Georgetown.
Baksh said that they will be targeting secondary schools mainly in the vicinity of Georgetown, the East Coast and East Bank of Demerara as well as schools in Region Three.
Baksh also expressed gratitude to Bakewell for their kind donation. He noted also that this gesture will help towards getting the students interested in the sport, which the ministry hopes to revive in schools next year.
“The MoE is highly appreciative of this kind gesture. This will go a far way to stimulate the students into the sport. We are looking to promote football [in the schools] next year in a more elaborate way,” Baksh said
“We will ensure a very wide distribution in both rural and urban schools. We will try to meet as many of them as we can but of course we don’t want those students from the far off areas. We can’t have students from Region 6 or from Region 10, and the tournament is at night.”
Baksh stated that it will not be mandatory that the students wear uniforms nor will it be compulsory that they attend the event with their teachers as it will be on a Sunday and organizing the students may be tedious.
Meanwhile co-director of the tournament Aubrey ‘Shanghai’ Major also took the opportunity to remind the public that all children under the age of 12 years old will be admitted to all tournament games free of charge.
