"If we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­sign, de­ter­mine and en­sure the fu­ture of our chil­dren, we want them to do some­thing for so­ci­ety and hu­man­i­ty. We want them to make a dif­fer­ence. We want them to be the point of in­flec­tion, the point of change."

Ad­dress­ingthe 2014 grad­u­at­ing clas­sof North­Gate Col­lege (NGC), keynote speak­er Ernest Kingun­der­scored that ed­u­ca­tion in its truest sense was de­signed not to pro­duce cer­tifi­cates but­to gen­er­ate ma­ture thinkers and glob­al­lead­ers who can pos­i­tive­ly im­pact so­ci­ety.

"So­ci­etal change and na­tions trans­for­ma­tion can on­ly oc­cur through the de­vel­op­ment of a gen­er­a­tion of en­light­ened, val­ues-based lead­ers," he said, echo­ingthe sen­ti­ments of the school's co-chair­man, Dr. Mar­lon Jame­son, who had spo­ken mo­ments be­fore.

Jame­son de­scribed the North­Gate grad­u­a­tion as a "point of hope" in a world where fam­i­lies, com­mu­ni­ties and na­tions are­see­ing their un­der­pin­ning val­ues fall apart.

"We speak words of des­tiny and en­cour­age­ment in­to the stu­dents' ears every day, and our hope is that they will join the ranks of those who fight brave­ly, af­ter leav­ing the col­lege, to up­hold good stan­dards, morals and ethics and demon­strate what a hu­man be­ing should be."

Jame­son was­stand­ing in for the school's chair­man, Dr. Noel Woodroffe, Pres­i­dent of Con­gress WBN.

NGC Di­rec­to­rY­olande La Pierre­out­lined the strides the school had­tak­en in the 2014aca­d­e­m­ic year, and re­flect­ed on the in­sti­tu­tion'sout­stand­ing lead­er­ship, ded­i­cat­ed staff and rich stu­dent life.

"It is tru­ly a time when our chil­dren can dream, ex­plore and refuse to be lim­it­ed by their phys­i­cal and ge­o­graph­ic con­text."

Invit­ing the au­di­ence of par­ents, friends of the col­lege and­grad­uands to jour­ney with her through the past year, she cit­ed the out­stand­ing achieve­ments, not on­ly in aca­d­e­mics, but al­so in sports, ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties and na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion­sin which stu­dents took part in2013-2014. By the end of her pre­sen­ta­tion, her pride and con­fi­dence seemed well placed,asshe said with ut­most con­fi­dence,"Grad­uands, you are ready for your time."

Tak­ing his cue from the di­rec­tor, vale­dic­to­ri­an Lyn­dell By­er said, "We are walk­ing out of the tun­nel and on­to the field, we see the lights of dozens of cam­eras, we hear the cheers of hoards of fans. This is our time. This is our world. The fu­ture is ours."

The sports anal­o­gy seemed apt, as­By­er al­so cap­tured the school's Sports award, along with­the li­on's share of the aca­d­e­m­ic prizes at the sixth form lev­el, andthe Busi­ness prize.

Nick Pas­call re­ceived the Ce­cile Tay­lor com­mu­ni­ty en­hance­ment award for the preser­va­tion of the North­Gate cul­ture. Oth­er spe­cial awardees were sixth for­mer and Head Boy, Joshua Thomas, who cap­tured the Chair­man's Award, and fifth for­mer Emaiya Hazel­wood who took­the es­teemed North­Gate Col­lege award.

The Grad­u­a­tion and Awards Cer­e­mo­ny took place at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine on June 28.