PHILIPSBURG:--- Youth Extravaganza 2018, organized by Teen Times for Carnival 2018, will feature 25 acts by St. Maarten’s talented youth across performing arts disciplines. The show will be held on Monday, April 23 and is being billed as the night the youth take over Carnival Village since they will be on Carnival break. Showtime is 8:00pm. The event is sponsored by TelCell.
The crew of Teen Times, no strangers to talent events being the annual hosts of Talent Showdown, has structured a line-up of acts that will give young people of varied talents the opportunity to showcase these talents on stage. Organizers stressed that Youth Extravaganza will not be a competition, just strictly a display of young talent.
Teen Times Coordinator Roosje Rommy-Richardson said following the passing of Hurricane Irma, the group knew that it would not be feasible to host its annual Interscholastic Talent Showdown in late 2017.
“We could have left the event until late 2018, but our young staff was a bit restless and wanted to jump right back into it. Their friends were bugging them about Teen Times doing something. Our last event was June 2017, prom Night, and they are used to us doing more by now. So we kinda knew the Carnival Foundation was looking for a group to organise the Extravaganza after a few years of disappointments. Having the experience in organising talent events, we said hey, why not put our stamp on the Youth Extravaganza. And here we are.”
Asked what Teen Times brings to the table as new coordinators for this event, she said Teen Times Talent Showdown has actually been around longer than the Youth Extravaganza has and after watching a few negative outcomes of that event over the past three or four years, the group decided to approach the St. Maarten Carnival Development Foundation (SCDF) with a request to host this year's event with one simple goal: to positively showcase our talented youth. Something we have been doing for 22 years.
“We take pride in our history and what we have done for St. Maarten's talented youth. We bring experience with these events and a reputation of positive, clean, constructive and uplifting content - this true for our newspaper, our talent events, our community service projects, our prom, with us it's across the board.”
For this year’s event Teen Times simply wants the youth to go out on stage and remind St. Maarten that the island is blessed with great young talent.
