CHARLESTOWN, Nevis – AS part of their annual Youth Quake celebrations, the Gingerland Wesleyan Holiness Church Youth Group hosted its third annual Brandson Lanns Inter-Church Youth Spelling Bee Competition and its inaugural David Butler Speech Competition.
President of the Gingerland Wesleyan Holiness Church as well as chief organiser of the event, Ron Daniel explained that the reason behind the competition was to “marry education and religion”. He reasoned that it was important that all young people knew how to spell as it is something that most adults still struggle with.
Daniel made the point that after slavery it was the churches that played the lead role in establishing schools to educate the young people and that this competition was a natural continuum in this regard.
There were three rounds with words from the Book of Daniel, General Bible Words and General Words for the Brandson Lanns
Spelling Bee Competition while the topic for the David Butler Speech Competition was “The Relevance of Abstinence in 2008”.
Daniel explained that he chose these topics to force the young people to read the Bible to find words to spell, and the speech competition was similarly designed for them to find out what the Bible had to say about abstinence before marriage while still exposing them to the art of public speaking.
The trophies were named in honour of the late Brandson Lanns and the late David Butler in recognition of the sterling contribution these men of God made to the Gingerland Wesleyan Holiness Church.
The five churches that participated in the Brandson Lanns Inter-Church Spelling Bee Competition are the Gingerland Wesleyan Holiness Church, Fenton Hill Church of God of Prophecy, Eden Brown Church of God, Charlestown Wesleyan Holiness Church and the Ebenezer United Church. There were however only two participants in the David Butler Speech Competition from the Gingerland Wesleyan Holiness Church and the Eden Brown Church of God.
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The Best Speller was Trish Taylor of the Fenton Hill Church of God of Prophecy while Kirtsiyn Herbert of the Gingerland Wesleyan Holiness Church won the Best Speaker position in the Speech Competition.
The winning team of the Spelling Bee competition was the Eden Brown Church of God and was represented by Dierdree Bowrin and Joyelle Phillip.
The winners of the Brandson Lanns Inter-Church Spelling and David Butler Speech Competition each received a Bank of Nevis Ltd. Youth Saver’s Account with a starting balance of EC 100.
The Bank of Nevis Ltd. Youth Saver’s Accounts come with lots of benefits, and among them, are continuous education about money matters and habit of saving.
The Bank’s Marketing Manager, Bronte Swanston-Hendrickson, announced at the end of the competition that the accounts also have a premium rate of interest, preferential treatment when applying for an educational/student loan, special gift on opening the account and an attractive passbook to help youths track savings. The account caters for youth ages one month to 18 years.
Members of the active youth group HOPE Nevis, who were present to judge and moderate the Brandson Lanns Inter-Church Youth Spelling Bee and the David Butler Inter-Church Youth Speech Competition, also made monetary contributions to all the winners of the competitions.
