Stu­dents, par­ents and staff of the Na­tion­al Cen­tre for Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties were yes­ter­day treat­ed to an elec­tri­fy­ing per­for­mance by the So­ca King Machel Mon­tano.

Stu­dents al­so got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to per­form with him on stage at the school’s com­pound in San Fer­nan­do.

The cen­tre got the op­por­tu­ni­ty af­ter win­ning the so­ca star’s so­cial me­dia #MM­Pardy com­pe­ti­tion. Stu­dents sub­mit­ted a video to the mu­sic of Mon­tano’s 2025 Road March con­tender Pardy and racked up over a mil­lion views and over 9,000 likes on their In­sta­gram page.

On Thurs­day, while an­nounc­ing that the NCPD stu­dents had earned a live per­for­mance by him af­ter the so­cial me­dia con­test, Mon­tano was moved to tears as he spoke about the thank you mes­sages he re­ceived from the stu­dents.

De­spite the blis­ter­ing sun, Mon­tano and the stu­dents par­tied like there was no to­mor­row for more than an hour, show­ing off their danc­ing and singing skills as they all belt­ed out his pop­u­lar so­ca hits.

Crick­eter Dwayne Bra­vo al­so shared the stage with Mon­tano, per­form­ing his pop­u­lar song Cham­pi­on.

De­liv­er­ing brief re­marks, prin­ci­pal Ka­haya Puck­erin said their vic­to­ry was a turn­ing point for the school and the en­tire dif­fer­ent­ly-abled com­mu­ni­ty.

For too long, she said the NCPD was “the best kept se­cret” but “no longer.”

Puck­erin said, “This vic­to­ry has shone a bright light on the tal­ents, re­silience and strength of our stu­dents. We’ve shown that per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties are not de­fined by their chal­lenges but by their ca­pa­bil­i­ties. This rep­re­sents progress to­wards di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and in­clu­sion as so­ci­ety be­gins to tru­ly see per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties as equals.”

Speak­ing with re­porters, Ri­car­do Ram­paul, NCPD’s chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer, said the chore­og­ra­phy of the video was done by the prin­ci­pal, life skills in­struc­tor Camille Brown-Ho­sein, and mar­ket­ing of­fi­cer Azam Az­iz.

Ad­mit­ting that the sup­port and re­sponse from the pub­lic and Mon­tano was over­whelm­ing, he said the stu­dents and par­ents were elat­ed.

“Re­mem­ber, for a per­son with a dis­abil­i­ty, they may not be able to ac­cess let’s say the fete cul­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go, not get that full ex­pe­ri­ence, so this is where the fete is com­ing to them and they are go­ing to have an en­joy­able day and en­joy the fete­ing of the Car­ni­val sea­son.”

Ram­paul hoped that this ex­po­sure would en­cour­age cor­po­rate T&T or gen­er­ous in­di­vid­u­als to col­lab­o­rate and/or part­ner with NCPD and in­crease aware­ness about their work and ser­vices.

“We can do with a re­vamp­ing of the en­tire struc­ture to make it more mod­ernised and more con­ducive for learn­ing and a more com­fort­able en­vi­ron­ment for a per­son to dis­play their skills and abil­i­ty,” he said. Fol­low­ing Mon­tano’s per­for­mance, there was a long line of ea­ger fans wait­ing to get a pho­to­graph with him.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly and San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris al­so at­tend­ed the event and were seen en­joy­ing the per­for­mances.