BASSETERRE, St.Kitts ( Friday 12th June 2020) – Management of the Alliance Française de St.Kitts-Nevis, like other institutions and business places locally and globally, has been adjusting business operations in a health and safety response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

In a telephone chit-chat with this media house, Director of the Alliance Française Marine Moncaut provided an update including details on the French Singing Competition 2020-At Home Edition.

“We were about to start the French Singing Competition before the COVID-19 hit us so we have closed the Alliance Francaise on the 18th of March to the public, and since then we have done a transition of [French language learning] classes online but about the competition, we didn’t organise much and in the Federation and the world with the COVID-19 situation, the social and cultural activities are very limited, especially for children and adolescents.”

On Thursday 11th June, she informed that a total of twenty-six submissions were received with a breakdown of 5 children (individuals between 4 years old and 10 years old), 11 adolescents (individuals between 10 years old and 17 years old and 10 adults (individuals from 18 years old and above).

The competition was launched on Wednesday 27th May as members of the public were asked to stay home and sing a French song, guided that they choose a song, record and submit before Wednesday 10th June.

As gathered for the two-day period of Thursday 11th and Friday 12th June, a four-member jury composed of Claudine Saunders, King Socrates, Grace Richardson and Gairy Knight will rate the 26 performances and choose 3 finalists per category.

The finale is slated to take place on Wednesday 17th June at 7:00PM via a private zoom media session, and persons interested in viewing are asked to send an email to culture.afskn@gmail.com to get access.

Moncaut talked about the reason for the addition of two categories by way of including others to be part of the contest which initially spotlighted children in high schools.

“The adults, we can still go into town and have some contact but the adolescents and the children, they are still staying home and not really seeing their friends and so they don’t have the same interactions and social lives so we decided to still provide and event for them and we also decided to propose that option to everyone because the previous competition was focused on adolescents, children who are in high school. This time we have three categories; one category is for children, one category is for adolescents and one for adults.”

The local Alliance Française director is of the view that the at home edition of the singing competition adds to the promotion of culture and education in a fun way yet financially beneficial to participants amidst these challenging times with cash vouchers as the prizes.

“This is a way to promote culture and education as something that could lift us up in these times of uncertainty, times of stress where the families can be stressed financially and that’s why we also changed the prizes to cash voucher.”

Moncaut continued: “We hope to get a little dynamic that could provide something a little light for the families-children, adolescents for everybody only to sing a song and get some kind of voucher as a way to promote culture, education; something fun…”

For more details, individuals can visit Alliance Française social media Facebook page at www.facebook.com/afstkittsnevis or contact 1-869-667-9019.