This year's Anthony N Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence will be presented tomorrow, when three laureates will receive awards of $500,000. They are Paula Lucie-Smith (Public and Civic Contributions), an educator from Trinidad & Tobago; Prof Leonard O'Garro (Science and Technology), a plant pathologist from St Vincent; and George Simon (Arts & Letters), an archaeologist and painter from Guyana.Under the award scheme, the first of its kind in the region, Caribbean people are selected to receive prizes for arts, sciences, and public works.
Each laureate also receives a medal and a citation. This is the fifth set of laureates named since the awards were launched in 2005. The awards were initially biennial, but have been awarded annually since 2010. The initiative is privately funded by the ANSA McAL Foundation, and relies on no other source of funding. Previous laureates have come from throughout the Caribbean.
Previous recipients include: Medical researcher Prof Terrence Forrester of Jamaica; anatomical pathologist Prof Kathleen Coard from Grenada; solar-energy entrepreneur James Husbands from Barbados; environmentalist Annette Arjoon from Guyana; and filmmaker Yao Ramesar from T&T. Laureates are nominated from their home territories by country nominating committees, and selected by a regional panel of eminent persons. Tomorrow's ceremony takes place at Theatre 1 at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA) in Port-of-Spain. The ceremony will be carried live on CNC3 from 8 to 9 pm.