On Ju­ly 10, Daren Gan­ga's Foun­da­tion host­ed an As­sess­ment Day for the 15 schol­ar­ship win­ners an­nounced last De­cem­ber 10. So what? You might ask. The ob­jec­tive was to as­sist the par­ents of the young­sters (nine to 13 years) to as­sess their own role in deal­ing with their son/daugh­ter in terms of be­hav­iour, at­ti­tude, re­spect, good man­ners at­ten­tion to stud­ies and their abil­i­ty to cope with the "fame" giv­en they were now high pro­file stu­dents at school.

As well, the stu­dents had to be hon­est with their own self-as­sess­ment know­ing that if they did not live up to ex­pec­ta­tions in class and with their re­spec­tive tal­ent coach­es (sports, mu­sic, danc­ing etc) they risked not con­tin­u­ing for a sec­ond year. Would it not be won­der­ful if every Cab­i­net Min­is­ter, State Board mem­ber, teacher, po­lice­man, union leader et al, were made to car­ry out a sim­i­lar per­for­mance ap­praisal? I sug­gest­ed such when I worked in the Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice es­pe­cial­ly to do with for­eign trav­el-"how did I ben­e­fit from Trip X and what will I do to im­ple­ment ideas and by when?" but got nowhere fast.

The re­al rea­son I want to write about Daren's As­sess­ment Day is to em­pha­size the beau­ti­ful as­pects and sim­plic­i­ty of what re­al­ly counts in life and which I sug­gest could change the cul­ture of our na­tion if at­ten­tion were paid to the hu­man de­tails that make a project suc­cess­ful. Here goes:

• Daren Gan­ga is a suc­cess­ful per­son and does not need a Foun­da­tion to prove the point to oth­ers.

How­ev­er, he is not con­cerned with "oth­ers"-he de­fines suc­cess in his own terms which in­cludes us­ing his net­work and giv­ing his en­er­gy, time, mon­ey, ef­fort, sen­si­tiv­i­ty and gen­uine love for young peo­ple who need help for their tal­ents to be rec­og­nized. When Daren speaks peo­ple lis­ten and Daren spoke of­ten in short bursts last Sun­day and every­one felt the gen­uine qual­i­ty of his words of sup­port and en­cour­age­ment. Daren walks the talk-al­ways! He is an in­spi­ra­tion to work with even though he does not make joke about things be­ing done right! He be­lieves in three ma­jor fac­tors of suc­cess: (1) keep the high­est stan­dards (2) al­ways meet peo­ple's ex­pec­ta­tions and (3) do things "dif­fer­ent­ly" so they are re­mem­bered.

• The As­sess­ment Day was held in Bar­rack­pore at the spa­cious prop­er­ty of Mr Kr­ishen Bas­deo who was on hand to help set up chairs, ta­bles, PA sys­tem and oth­er re­quire­ments. He knows Daren and so re­spects him, that when we of­fered to pay the rental fee, he re­fused to ac­cept it. How of­ten in to­day's dol­lar grab­bing world do you find such gen­eros­i­ty?

•The Pro­gramme was sched­uled to start at 10 am sharp and it did. Imag­ine that! Sev­er­al par­ents with­out cars, two moth­ers trav­el­ling with ba­bies from Moru­ga-no mat­ter! Every Jack and Jacque­line made sure their child was there on time. Can you imag­ine the nor­mal Tri­ni au­di­ence be­ing on time in like fash­ion? For any­thing?

• School Prin­ci­pal Di­ana Ja­cobs spoke (for no fee) about "at­ti­tude" to the au­di­ence and her talk was rel­e­vant and ex­cel­lent. More im­por­tant, she left her Sun­day school class at her home to de­liv­er her talk and then went back to them. How of­ten do you find that sense of com­mit­ment es­pe­cial­ly know­ing how im­por­tant and in­flu­en­tial her teach­ing role is? How many teach­ers to­day would come out on a Sun­day with­out pay even for Daren Gan­ga?

• Karon Gool­jar's moth­er pre­pared 60 box­es of de­li­cious snacks be­cause Karon was an in­te­gral mem­ber of Daren's man­age­ment team.

• One young fa­ther left his own fam­i­ly at home so that he could bring two young­sters whose fa­ther was un­able to be present. He stayed to the very end to take them back home. Can you be­lieve such kind­ness?

• As al­ways, the rock on which the Foun­da­tion is built is the Gan­ga fam­i­ly who nev­er fail to be present to help where nec­es­sary and of­fer sup­port and en­cour­age­ment. At the Guid­ance Day in March when Daren was out the coun­try, el­der broth­er Shel­don was up front and cen­tre, giv­ing the open­ing ad­dress and en­sur­ing the show ran smooth­ly. This time, younger broth­er Sher­win was there tak­ing pho­tos, sign­ing and pre­sent­ing minia­ture bats to the stu­dents, lis­ten­ing to the com­ments, prob­lems and con­cerns of the par­ents and look­ing af­ter the fi­nances for the day. It nev­er ceas­es to fas­ci­nate me how the three broth­ers work to­geth­er as a tight­ly knit team with­out a hint of one try­ing to out­do the oth­ers. Daren may be the biggest name but he would be in trou­ble with­out the strength and de­vo­tion of his two amaz­ing broth­ers. I love to see them in ac­tion.

• At the end of the pro­gramme, whom did I dis­cov­er sit­ting at the back of the crowd but Mom and Dad Gan­ga. I should have ex­pect­ed noth­ing less as they are al­ways present no mat­ter what the oc­ca­sion where their sons are in­volved. As Daren, Sher­win, Karon and I were sit­ting dis­cussing how the day turned out, some­one came in to say that be­cause it was Sun­day, there were next to no taxis so some of the moth­ers with ba­bies were still stand­ing on the road. With­out think­ing twice, Daren ex­plained the sit­u­a­tion to his moth­er and asked her if she could dri­ve the moth­ers near the Po­lice Sta­tion to make trans­port eas­i­er. In two sec­onds flat, Mrs Gan­ga left her seat with a big smile ob­vi­ous­ly pleased to ac­com­mo­date the wish of her son. What a beau­ti­ful, kind, un­selfish way to end a day so full of mag­nif­i­cent lessons in fam­i­ly love, love for neigh­bour and giv­ing to those who have less than you, with grat­i­tude and hu­mil­i­ty.

• On Au­gust 4, the third an­nu­al Daren Gan­ga sum­mer sports camp for 70 boys (nine to 13 years) be­gins with Sher­win in charge of the event. Both pre­vi­ous camps have been char­ac­ter­ized by typ­i­cal Gan­ga "hu­man" con­sid­er­a­tions-no reg­is­tra­tion fee; dai­ly eats when they ar­rive and when they leave; high­ly qual­i­fied crick­et and foot­ball coach­es; a nurse on du­ty with first aid kit and a doc­tor on call in case of any­thing se­ri­ous; the best of fa­cil­i­ties and equip­ment and a fan­tas­tic pre­sen­ta­tion cer­e­mo­ny when every­one feels a win­ner.

No won­der the camp is al­ready over-sub­scribed! I have writ­ten it of­ten be­fore and do so again-T&T needs to learn from and im­i­tate the Gan­ga fam­i­ly in our dai­ly lives. In the most nat­ur­al of ways and with­out any fan­fare, they demon­strate the val­ues and prin­ci­ples we should live by. Wher­ev­er pos­si­ble, I urge read­ers (if any) to sup­port and con­tribute to Daren's Foun­da­tion even in the small­est of ways. Your gen­eros­i­ty will make him very hap­py and you will feel so good know­ing that you con­tributed to a won­der­ful cause with a deep-seat­ed sense of per­son­al sat­is­fac­tion.