LAST Friday, Honey Bun Limited held the award ceremony for its sixth staging of the Honey Bun School Dayz competition at Tulloch Primary in Bog Walk St Catherine.

The competition ran from September 2010 to April 2011 and saw over 500 entries with visits to over 200 schools. The sixth staging also saw the introduction of the Sing Along Singathon where students were asked to create a song under the theme ‘School Maad’, promoting the importance of school.

Although challenged by the hot weather, the event got off to a good start and was kept upbeat with suitable selections from Zip 103 FM’s ZJ Electra, non-stop cheers from the enthusiastic crowd of Tulloch primary students and the energetic hosting skills of promotions and customer service manager of Honey Bun, Antoinette Morgan. There was little to no delay in the programme and the prize giving began soon after the program started.

Tulloch Primary had the most entries in the School Dayz competition and was, therefore, awarded the top school award. They had much to celebrate about, the prizes were very attractive and according to the principal Vince Williams, were much needed. The winning school won four computers, one laptop for the principal, one printer, a flat screen television and the concessionaires at the school were awarded Adam and Eve gift certificates.

The nature of the prizes this year was reflective of the aim of the programme, marketing executive of Honey Bun, Yolande Fullwood told TEENage.

“One of our objectives was that we wanted to contribute to the development of young minds. This year the message was the importance of education and as such we saw it fit to give away a lot of computers,” Fullwood said.

Second-place went to Dennis Tobin Preparatory in Falmouth. What was unique about this school was that it had a population of only 70 students, but was still able to get the second highest number of entries in the competition.

Another big winner was Taheim Young of Alpha Primary, who was the winning student of the competition. He and his teacher walked away with a laptop accompanied by gift baskets courtesy of the sponsors and an Adam and Eve gift certificate respectively.

After all the awards were handed out, the programme was given a boost as it was time for the Singathon finalist’s face-off. Asheka Cunningham of Foga Road High who was the round one winner and Chevon Lawrence of Irwin High school went head to head in what was a sizzling Singathon clash. In the end, the Foga High School student’s confidence and command of both the stage and the audience proved more superior to Chevon’s performance and Asheka Cunningham was named the Honey Bun Singathon winner.

“I was feeling very confident and everyone in my school and my community loves the song so I was not worried,” Asheka told TEENage.

Since its inception six years ago, Honey Bun’s School Dayz competition has given away over 40 computers along with other prizes. School participation has increased every year and is extended to both primary and secondary level schools.

“We, at Honey Bun, did not want to just go in the schools and promote our products and leave, we wanted to ensure that we were communicating in the best way possible the importance of an education to the students and so far they have responded well to our messages,” said Krystal Chong, marketing manager of Honey Bun Limited.