This article by the Bocas Lit Fest's founder and board president Marina Salandy-Brown first appeared in the Trinidad and Tobago Express on September 17, 2025. The Bocas Lit Fest is another major victim of the NGC’s shift in corporate social responsibility (CSR) priorities, which we understand are now geared toward sport. In 2011, when NGC decided to fund the proposed new literary festival, NGC had no well-formulated arts funding policy. Initiatives were funded on merit, and the ambitious Bocas Lit Fest became its major project. In the absence of a sustainable national funding policy, Bocas Lit Fest adopted a policy of having more than one enlightened, long-term sponsor.