Our Mission
CAYASCO’s mission is to “Keep Caribbean Culture Alive” in the Greater Hartford community. CAYASCO continues to encourage the development and maintenance of an active, engaged and vibrant Caribbean Community by engaging in the following:
Our Work
Current/Recent Events
The Annual Taste of the Caribbean and Jerk Festival is a collaboration with the Riverfront Recapture Inc. This event brings our rich West Indian Culture to a wider Greater Hartford audience in a fun and family friendly environment, and helps promote the City of Hartford'svision as being "New England's Rising Star." It gives visitors the opportunity to sample our world famous dishes as well as experience the Caribbean through taste, sight and sound
Past Events
- CAYASCO's Children's Cultural and Educational Series is a program that uses technology, education, art and story telling to introduce traditional Caribbean culture to a new generation of students. The goal of this series is to educate youth in the Greater Hartford Area to become aware of traditional Caribbean-American culture, history and values that can be used as a guide to their future.
- CAYASCO’s Academic Achievement Program (CAAP) is one program in this series. CAAP'S goal is to help students use technology as a vehicle to research and promote a better understanding of Caribbean American culture. Prior themes included: "Leadership and Community Activism", - students researched information about Caribbean- American community leaders, interviewed local community activists and leaders and used web technology to document their findings by combining both text and graphic images to tell the stories of these leaders.
- Children's Cultural Series, the arts/cultural aspect of the series, exposed students/children of Caribbean descent to an aspect of their culture that is sometimes lost when living in another country. This series of 3 to 4 events used performing arts to introduce, remind and teach students/children of the traditional aspects of their Caribbean values, heritage and culture.
- Hartford Library/CAYASCO Panel Discussions (co-sponsor): to share the story, knowledge, and experience of the Caribbean community in Hartford, CT. The panels included religious history, family history, history of associations and history of the arts.
- Caribbean Literature Festival (co-sponsor): hosted by the Albany Avenue Branch Public Library in Hartford. There was a panel discussion held with Caribbean authors, who also signed books for the attendees. Poetry readings, arts and crafts activities for children, and a Trinidadian band playing soca and calypso were among some of the events held that day.