Cherisse Moe

In to­day's world, ethics, morals and pro­fes­sion­al val­ues seem to be on their way out the front door. How­ev­er, or­gan­i­sa­tions like Anoint­ed Pro­fes­sion­als Ex­hibit­ing Ex­cel­lence (APEX) are work­ing to bring these fast erod­ing stan­dards back in vogue. APEX, a project of the Di­vine Des­tiny Wor­ship Cen­tre, lo­cat­ed in Diego Mar­tin, is on a mis­sion to help re-es­tab­lish es­sen­tial core prin­ci­ples in every sec­tor of the pro­fes­sion­al world. In­ter­im Of­fi­cers Key­sean George, Na­tal­ie Bish­op and Yolande Mar­cial say de­spite liv­ing in a so­ci­ety where "any­thing goes," do­ing the right thing "should nev­er go out of style."

With more than 200 ac­tive mem­bers who span five ma­jor fields of pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ence-ed­u­ca­tion, med­i­cine, busi­ness, pub­lic ser­vice and the le­gal sys­tem, Bish­op, 40, said APEX was born out of the need for an of­fi­cial body to act as a men­tor to en­cour­age pro­fes­sion­als to car­ry out their du­ties in an eth­i­cal man­ner. "It's a pil­lar on which we stand on as a church and on which we as a so­ci­ety must stand on." But the mem­bers of APEX don't just walk the walk, they be­lieve that it's im­por­tant to lead by ex­am­ple.

On No­vem­ber 5, APEX, of­fi­cial­ly launched in 2010, will host its fifth fo­rum, ti­tled Med­ical Ethics 11, at the HY­ATT Re­gency, which aims to im­prove pa­tient health care as well as the qual­i­ty of ser­vice met­ed out to the pub­lic by med­ical in­sti­tu­tions. "Nurs­es need to have a voice, pa­tients need to have a voice and we are here to as­sist them to do their jobs."

• Call 695-2849 or vis­it apex@ddwc.net for fur­ther de­tails on the Med­ical Ethics Fo­rum. The cost of at­tend­ing the Med­ical Ethics 11 Fo­rum is $300.

Ed­u­cat­ing pro­fes­sion­als

Not­ing that it's the first time that an or­gan­i­sa­tion was launched specif­i­cal­ly to help ed­u­cate pro­fes­sion­als on eth­i­cal val­ues, the Chris­t­ian pro­fes­sion­als said they re­main op­ti­mistic that the group will make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in T&T. "It's re­al­ly about op­er­at­ing with in­tegri­ty and be­ing a pro­fes­sion­al at what you do. There isn't a need to com­pro­mise your ethics and morals," not­ed Mar­cial, a 51-year-old Fi­nan­cial Con­sul­tant.

Bish­op, a Train­ing Spe­cial­ist, con­curred. She said APEX had one ul­ti­mate goal, to en­rich the spir­i­tu­al and in­tel­lec­tu­al lives of pro­fes­sion­als by pro­vid­ing a fo­rum for schol­ar­ly dis­cus­sion and ed­u­cat­ing mem­bers of cut­ting edge de­vel­op­ments in their re­spec­tive fields. Ac­cord­ing to George, 29, pro­fes­sion­als should al­ways be en­cour­aged to pur­sue ex­cel­lence and at­tain the high­est lev­el of achieve­ment in their ca­reers. "We think it's very im­por­tant to men­tor pro­fes­sion­als in the work­place. They need to know changes glob­al­ly, what's re­quired and what's not."

Ex­cel­lence and in­tegri­ty

Think­ing of join­ing APEX? Well the group's of­fi­cers say it is open to all pro­fes­sion­als in T&T for a fee of $150 an­nu­al­ly. Mak­ing it clear that mem­ber­ship was not lim­it­ed to the church fra­ter­ni­ty, George ar­tic­u­lat­ed that APEX had suc­ceed­ed in tran­scend­ing re­li­gious and class bor­ders. Mar­cial summed it up, "We want to be here to give ad­vice and sup­port peo­ple and let them know that it's all right to make a moral de­ci­sion."