Ver­non Ram­lo­gan and Alexan­der Bain are role mod­els with­in the AL­TA fam­i­ly. They both share a snip­pet of their AL­TA ex­pe­ri­ence, as we send the call out for more men to con­sid­er vol­un­teer­ing as AL­TA tu­tor.

The care econ­o­my con­sists of a range of ac­tiv­i­ties that in­clude paid and un­paid work, which fo­cus­es on the over­all well-be­ing of peo­ple. It in­cludes the so­cial work, health­care and ed­u­ca­tion sec­tors of an econ­o­my which, al­though im­por­tant, is of­ten over­looked. An ef­fi­cient care econ­o­my sup­ports an eq­ui­table so­ci­ety through eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty and job cre­ation (es­pe­cial­ly for women) and sus­tains cur­rent and fu­ture hu­man ac­tiv­i­ty.

A suc­cess­ful cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence be­gins with a promise to meet a cus­tomer’s ex­pec­ta­tions and then de­liv­er­ing on those ex­pec­ta­tions. It sounds sim­ple enough. Make a promise and de­liv­er a cu­rat­ed ex­pe­ri­ence. Yet, if the for­mu­la is so straight­for­ward, why do so many busi­ness­es fail the de­liv­ery test? The an­swer lies in the art of cu­ra­tion.

When I con­sid­ered this top­ic, I was think­ing about the pre­scrip­tive­ness of our peo­ple and how much bet­ter off we would be if we each ac­cept­ed that we do not know every­thing.

For 52 years, Cari­com coun­tries have col­lab­o­rat­ed on the prac­ti­cal, prag­mat­ic pur­suits based on its four main pil­lars: eco­nom­ic in­te­gra­tion; for­eign pol­i­cy co­or­di­na­tion; hu­man and so­cial de­vel­op­ment and se­cu­ri­ty. All con­sti­tut­ing the in­te­gra­tion ar­chi­tec­ture to­wards the com­mu­ni­ty’s stat­ed ob­jec­tives.

If I had to ar­gue my one grouse with our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, it would be its fail­ure to de­vel­op a well-round­ed child. It would seem that our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is en­gi­neered to­wards train­ing chil­dren to sit ex­am­i­na­tions. There is very lit­tle time or en­er­gy ded­i­cat­ed to teach­ing prop­er life skills that can equip a child for life out­side of the class­room or ex­am­i­na­tion hall. When com­pared to the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tems in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions, it is easy to de­ter­mine how bad­ly we fall short.

With dis­cus­sions of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form and chang­ing mu­nic­i­pal bound­aries, I want to raise the is­sue of the rights of the First Peo­ples to self-gov­ern­ment and self-de­ter­mi­na­tion. I spoke to two ma­jor lead­ers of the First Peo­ples’ com­mu­ni­ties in T&T, and they both agree there is a need for in­de­pen­dent lo­cal gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the First Peo­ples.

Car­ni­val 2026 is now his­to­ry and among the Mer­ry Mon­archs are: record-break­ing 12-time Road March King Machel Mon­tano; Ca­lyp­so Monarch Ter­ri Lyons; Panora­ma win­ners Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus; large Car­ni­val band win­ners The Lost Tribe; King of Car­ni­val Cur­tis Eu­stace; Queen of Car­ni­val Rox­anne Oma­lo and Chut­ney So­ca Monarch, Savi­ta Singh. These com­pe­ti­tions were not with­out bac­cha­nal: Is Machel un­beat­able? Was Savi­ta the favourite? Did TTT re­al­ly cen­sor de­fend­ing monarch Helon Fran­cis dur­ing Di­manche Gras? Was there an ul­te­ri­or mo­tive be­hind “we mut­ed Helon’s mic on TTT” dur­ing WACK ra­dio’s live cov­er­age?

“One hun­dred per cent (100%) fund­ing for uni­ver­si­ty ed­u­ca­tion has con­tributed to labour mar­ket sat­u­ra­tion, wage sup­pres­sion and grow­ing frus­tra­tion among high­ly qual­i­fied grad­u­ates who are un­able to se­cure mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment.

Grow­ing up, I knew I could be what­ev­er I want­ed to be, from an ar­chi­tect to a sur­geon. See­ing dif­fer­ent women in my life in a va­ri­ety of work­places and rep­re­sent­ed on­screen in a pletho­ra of fields, I nev­er ques­tioned my abil­i­ty to achieve my as­pi­ra­tions. Now that I’m old­er, I re­alise how priv­i­leged I’ve been to be in an en­vi­ron­ment that al­lowed me to dream, striv­ing to­wards what­ev­er goals I set for my­self, and I’m grate­ful to live in a time where I can choose what I want to do and have it be at­tain­able.

Last week’s col­umn re­viewed the IMF’s con­clud­ing state­ment and list­ed its key points. Re­ports from in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies like the IMF and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), as well as rat­ing agen­cies (Moody’s, S&P, Fitch), are im­por­tant be­cause they pro­vide an in­de­pen­dent view of the econ­o­my’s per­for­mance and of­fer rec­om­men­da­tions for more ef­fec­tive ap­proach­es.

At first glance, the “well­ness in­dus­try” looks mar­vel­lous. It speaks about pre­ven­tion. It men­tions gut health, cor­ti­sol, mi­to­chon­dria and hor­mones.