WILLEMSTAD, Curaçao – This year marks the 33rd anniversary of Festival at Sea. Festival at Sea is a cultural cruise from the United States focused on African American travelers. Each year, the company Blue World Travel charters a cruise ship to host the Festival at Sea celebration.
This year, the company rented the cruise ship Celebrity Reflection. They visited several places, including Curaçao, with about 3,000 African American guests.
One of the regular features of the cruise is a book drive for children. These are new books donated by passengers as part of the company’s efforts to give back and commitment to literacy. This year, Curaçao was chosen to be the recipient of a total of 1,000 books collected by the passengers.
To facilitate this generous gesture, the Curaçao Tourist Board (CTB), in close collaboration with the Curaçao Ports Authority (CPA), organized a reception where Mrs. Patricia Nicholson Yarbrough, President of Blue World Travel Corp. and Mrs. Peggy Taylor Presley of Festival at Sea, officially handed over the 1,000 books to Mr. Lysandro Inacio, Director of the National Library of Curaçao, and Mr. Tito Ansano also from the National Library of Curaçao. The National Library of Curaçao (BNK), in turn, will distribute the books free of charge to children during events they organize.
The books are in English, cover a variety of topics, and are aimed at children between the ages of 4 to 12. The group also donated several school materials for the children.
To make the celebration more festive, CTB arranged for live music by young guitarist Quency Wilson, known as ‘Quency The Guitar Man’.
CTB thanks CPA for their help in coordinating. We also thank Customs for assisting with clearing the donated materials. Finally, we appreciate BNK for distributing the items received.
