Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The re­cip­i­ents of this year’s An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Awards, Caribbean Ex­cel­lence, al­ready have their sights set on pay­ing it for­ward. The pro­gramme, which is in its 20th year, recog­nis­es hu­man en­deav­our that up­lifts the re­gion and has award­ed 66 lau­re­ates so far with over TT$32 mil­lion in fund­ing.

Two T&T na­tion­als are among four from across the re­gion be­ing recog­nised for their out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to de­vel­op­ment this year.

In the sphere of Arts and Let­ters, jazz trum­peter, com­pos­er, band leader and pro­fes­sor Eti­enne Charles, was laud­ed for his com­mit­ment to us­ing mu­sic to in­spire, unite and ed­u­cate.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Charles said he was hum­bled by the award.

“My ini­tial re­ac­tion was shock. I was im­me­di­ate­ly filled with a high lev­el of grat­i­tude, sim­ply be­cause of how pres­ti­gious this award is and the types of peo­ple who have been named lau­re­ates,” he said.

“Through things like Car­ni­val, we are able to ex­press our­selves but al­so di­a­logue in re­al-time through art with our his­to­ry, and for me, it is a very telling thing and so it comes full cir­cle every year through tra­di­tion­al mas and char­ac­ters.”

The cul­tur­al ex­plor­er ex­plained that he was now look­ing for­ward to dis­cov­er­ing new po­ten­tial with his award, which al­so car­ries a $500,000 dis­burse­ment.

“It will al­so en­able me to reach new com­mu­ni­ties and find more con­nec­tions. Specif­i­cal­ly, one project I’m work­ing on is con­nect­ing the whole African di­as­po­ra, not just the Caribbean,” Charles said.

“It will al­low me, when I come to T&T for con­certs, to not have to leave right away, but I’d be able to stay a cou­ple more days and do more out­reach work, which I have been do­ing for more than ten years now.”

E-com­merce agri-en­tre­pre­neur Rachel Re­nie-Gon­za­les mean­while copped the award in the field of en­tre­pre­neur­ship. Re­nie-Gon­za­les, who has been on a jour­ney to rev­o­lu­tionise food dis­tri­b­u­tion in the coun­try, pi­o­neered a farm-to-ta­ble val­ue chain—en­hanc­ing the lives of farm­ers and con­sumers along the way.

“We have worked so hard from the farms straight to the con­sumers through dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, in­te­grat­ing as much with­in the en­tire process; it has be­come so nec­es­sary and a way of life,” she said.

Through her on­line plat­form, Re­nie-Gon­za­les has been able to sell over one mil­lion pounds of pro­duce and wants to en­sure sus­tain­abil­i­ty in the in­dus­try.

She said, “A big pas­sion for us and our fu­ture is cli­mate re­silience. These things have di­rect­ly im­pact­ed our farm­ers, pro­duc­tion and out­put, and it’s an area we want to in­vest some of this prize mon­ey in­to.”

Dr Si­mone Badal, a Ja­maican can­cer re­searcher who has trans­formed the field through her pi­o­neer­ing de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean can­cer cell lines, was al­so award­ed in the field of sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.

“It was more im­por­tant for me that what­ev­er prod­ucts we de­vel­oped as a team, first and fore­most as­sist or pro­vide re­lief treat­ment for our own peo­ple be­fore they pro­vide treat­ment for every­body else,” she said.

Badal ex­plained that she was com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing sci­en­tif­ic ex­cel­lence in the Caribbean.

“It is im­por­tant not just to de­vel­op cell lines but en­sure these tools that we are de­vel­op­ing ac­tu­al­ly ex­hib­it trans­la­tion­al work and im­prove the treat­ment and out­comes of our Black men and women or Caribbean men and women with these dis­eases,” she said.

Mean­while, Ay­o­dele Dal­gety-Dean, a fam­i­ly ther­a­pist from Guyana, re­ceived the award in the field of Pub­lic and Civic con­tri­bu­tions. She is be­ing cred­it­ed for her lead­ing role in trans­form­ing the land­scape of child pro­tec­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy among the coun­try’s in­dige­nous and mi­grant pop­u­la­tions.