Charles Kong Soo

The An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence ho­n­oured its four 2019 lau­re­ates at a gala cer­e­mo­ny in the San­dals Roy­al in Bar­ba­dos.

The lau­re­ates are: Arts & Let­ters: Danielle Di­ef­fen­thaller, Film­mak­er, T& T, En­tre­pre­neur­ship: Ki­mala Ben­nett, Me­dia En­tre­pre­neur, Ja­maica, Pub­lic & Civic Con­tri­bu­tions: Corey Lane, Civic Ac­tivist, Bar­ba­dos, Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy: Prof Michael Tay­lor, Cli­mate Sci­en­tist, Ja­maica.

In his fea­ture ad­dress tonight, Ex­ec­u­tive Chair­man of the ANSA McAL group A Nor­man Sab­ga said “Dur­ing the course of our 14-year his­to­ry we've made great strides in grow­ing the pres­tige and recog­ni­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with these awards. “We ac­knowl­edge that in or­der to tru­ly be a Caribbean award, we couldn't lim­it these cel­e­bra­tions to on­ly Trinidad.

“Last year we had a suc­cess­ful stag­ing in Ja­maica. In 2017 we were gra­cious­ly host­ed in Guyana. Bar­ba­dos boasts of a proud and sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on our re­gion and has sup­plied the world with a phe­nom­e­nal ar­ray of schol­ars, pro­fes­sion­als, artists, mu­si­cians, sports­men, and lead­ers.”

He said it was a con­tri­bu­tion that all should be proud of re­gard­less of which is­land we called home.

Sab­ga said the ANSA McAl group has had a pres­ence in Bar­ba­dos for over 97 years and con­sid­ered them­selves to be Ba­jans. He said from those shores, Dr James Hus­bands in 2008 be­came the first lau­re­ate in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy and in 2013 Prof Anselm Hen­nis was al­so in­duct­ed in the same cat­e­go­ry. Sab­ga said this year the or­gan­i­sa­tion was proud to add an­oth­er in­ductee and recog­nise the ex­cel­lence of the peo­ple from Bar­ba­dos.

He said The An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence was some­thing very dear to his fa­ther, the late Dr An­tho­ny Sab­ga.

Sab­ga said ex­cel­lence to his fa­ther was the truest sense, it was some­thing he ad­mired, re­spect­ed, and en­deav­oured to por­tray in every­thing he did.

He said dur­ing the course of his life, Dr Sab­ga en­coun­tered many ex­cep­tion­al peo­ple.

Sab­ga said by the time his fa­ther re­tired, he was aware that many out­stand­ing peo­ple lived in the Caribbean.

He said his fa­ther was al­so aware of the enor­mous quan­ti­ty of na­tive ge­nius that lived in our peo­ple which was not recog­nised and re­ward­ed.

Sab­ga said as a fi­nal ges­ture to the re­gion that had been so gen­er­ous to him and his fam­i­ly, he felt that it was his du­ty to seek them out, recog­nise and re­ward them and to in­spire all by their ac­tions and ded­i­ca­tion to ex­cel­lence.

He quot­ed a proverb: "Gen­er­a­tion af­ter gen­er­a­tion will live on our dreams. What we do and say to­day will have an im­pact on what­ev­er hap­pens to­mor­row."

Sab­ga said this proverb em­bod­ied every­thing that these awards stood for. He said by ho­n­our­ing those of to­day that cre­ate a pow­er­ful and in­spi­ra­tional change that will im­pact the lives of gen­er­a­tions to come, they hoped to not on­ly con­grat­u­late them on their achieve­ments but more so to in­spire oth­ers to fol­low in their foot­steps.

Sab­ga said as the world moved to­wards glob­al cul­tur­i­sa­tion, they were forced to look be­yond their com­mu­ni­ties to face chal­lenges and seek op­por­tu­ni­ties.

He said as a peo­ple they can go for­ward se­cure in their Caribbean iden­ti­ty on­ly if they in­vest­ed the re­sources nec­es­sary for its preser­va­tion and strength­en­ing.