Trinidad’s ruling party sells jewels to raise funds for new headquarters

(Trinidad Guardian) Even po­lit­i­cal par­ties must find in­no­v­a­tive ways to raise funds to sus­tain op­er­a­tions.

In the case of the Peo­ples Na­tion­al Move­ment, who are con­struct­ing a mul­ti-storey Bal­isi­er House on the site of the ex­ist­ing premis­es, the chal­lenge has been to come up with an idea to raise mil­lions to bankroll the project.

That idea has come from one of their mem­bers who saw the work of Caribbean Jew­ellers and sug­gest­ed that an ex­clu­sive col­lec­tion of jew­el­ry could be one of the fundrais­ing tools.

Caribbean Jew­ellers, well known for cre­at­ing com­mem­o­ra­tive pieces for the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor’s grad­u­a­tion events, have come up with the Bal­isi­er Col­lec­tion, a set of su­perbly craft­ed loy­al­ty rings and oth­er items in­tend­ed to re­flect “un­wa­ver­ing sup­port for the PNM”.

The man be­hind this strate­gic part­ner­ship, An­gad Sand­hu, Man­u­fac­tur­ing Di­rec­tor, Sat Naam In­dus­tries Ltd, the par­ent com­pa­ny of Caribbean Jew­ellers, said their di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion ef­forts over the years had gen­er­at­ed the con­cept for this se­ries.

“A par­ty mem­ber saw the work we did and ap­proached us. I did the best I could to ful­fil their vi­sion and with our dis­tinc­tive com­pe­ten­cies came up with an ex­ten­sive line of loy­al­ty rings.”

He con­firmed that this orig­i­nal se­ries would even com­ple­ment the wear­ing of the now fa­mous Bal­isi­er tie, “The Bal­isi­er Col­lec­tion is an orig­i­nal line and ranges from tie tacks to neck­laces to ear­rings. The de­sign of oth­er items is on­go­ing.”

Ever mind­ful of the chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic times Sand­hu said busi­ness­es must con­tin­u­al­ly rein­vent them­selves to give them the lead­ing edge.

“The sky’s the lim­it in terms of de­sign, but it’s all done with the Bal­isi­er House and the rich his­to­ry of the PNM in mind.”

In­di­cat­ing the items ranged from sil­ver stop­pers be­gin­ning at $40 to rings start­ing as low as $500 and go­ing all the way up to $20,000, Sand­hu said it would de­pend on a per­son’s choice.

Pressed to say what had in­flu­enced the de­signs, Sand­hu ex­plained, “The PNM is the first in the Caribbean and the west­ern hemi­sphere to have the ap­pli­ca­tion of a unique tech­nol­o­gy ap­plied to these types of de­signs. They are dif­fer­ent from any tra­di­tion­al ring.”

Asked to re­veal if the PNM had in­vest­ed any funds in the ven­ture and what per­cent­age of each sale would go to the par­ty, Sand­hu de­clined to give de­tails of the client re­la­tion­ship.

How­ev­er, he in­di­cat­ed that all or­ders would be han­dled through Bal­isi­er House.

Sand­hu urged, “When you think about in­vest­ing in gold, it is the same emo­tion which is trig­gered when in­vest­ing in the PNM. You know it will last and con­tin­ue mov­ing for­ward. The PNM has an ex­cep­tion­al lega­cy, and it is the same. You can trust and de­pend on the PNM much in the same way you can de­pend on and trust in the items you are buy­ing.”

As­sur­ing sup­port­ers’ the items are “very af­ford­able,” Sand­hu said, “Of course, there are the high­er range items as well, but we have made it af­ford­able for every­one who wants to sup­port the PNM. They can wear the Loy­al­ty Rings and Bal­isi­er Col­lec­tion with pride.”

Sand­hu con­clud­ed, “This is the on­ly par­ty that re­al­ly has that rich his­to­ry which can be tru­ly cap­tured and re­flect­ed in the pieces we have cre­at­ed.”

Caribbean Jew­ellers has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to ex­pand the line of the Bal­isi­er Col­lec­tion and an­tic­i­pates that the se­ries would at­tract in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion.