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Thursday, July 24, 2025

Your Sto­ries

Young, successful entrepreneur battles incurable disease

by

20160529

At 27, Shanan­da Gopaul is al­ready a suc­cess­ful busi­ness­woman with her own store, Mag­nifique Gift Shop, in Princes Town.No one can tell look­ing at her but Gopaul is strick­en with a de­bil­i­tat­ing dis­ease de­scribed as in­cur­able.

Ul­cer­a­tive col­i­tis, an in­flam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease, be­gan af­flict­ing her in her teens and she was so ill she was un­able to write her CXC ex­am­i­na­tions.Gopaul said her long, painful bat­tle with the dis­ease took a toll on her phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly and, some­times, spir­i­tu­al­ly.

"My faith in God was way­ward at times but, you know, you nev­er go doubt­ing."

With an in­ner dri­ve that came from her faith, Gopaul learnt to live with sta­bilis­er med­i­cine and a strict di­et and be­gan to fight the dis­ease.

"It's still a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Every day is not the same. Some days the med­ica­tion and the di­et don't work.

"I call those days the not-so-good days. I don't have a choice but to keep mov­ing for­ward. Af­ter God I'm good."

To­day, apart from own­ing her own busi­ness, she has al­so gone back to school and is do­ing her fi­nal year in a busi­ness man­age­ment de­gree.Re­call­ing her tri­als, Gopaul said with­out CXC sub­jects, what kind of fu­ture would she have.She be­gan sell­ing Bath & Body prod­ucts from her home and door-to-door to earn her own in­come.

With en­dur­ing faith, the good val­ues in­stilled in her, and the sup­port of her fam­i­ly–in par­tic­u­lar her moth­er–Gopaul made it through those tur­bu­lent ear­ly years.

"God has re­al­ly worked in my favour. And He has nev­er failed me."

Re­call­ing the start of her busi­ness, sell­ing Bath & Body prod­ucts re­al­ly kicked off.

"I did this for three years un­til I start­ed to get tired be­ing on the road. I want­ed a sta­tion­ary place from where I can sell my prod­ucts.

"I looked around, saw a lit­tle place and said I am go­ing to take this."

Telling her­self, "I have to make this work," Gopaul bought used show­cas­es be­cause she couldn't af­ford brand new ones and set up her store.Through­out her or­deal her moth­er, Maria, was by her side, guid­ing and sup­port­ing.

"She is my right hand. She is there with me in the store every­day help­ing me to run it.

"My mom is a spe­cial per­son who very mo­ti­vat­ing."

Gopaul ex­pand­ed her range of gift items and, to­day, her busi­ness is do­ing well, she said.Fam­i­ly val­ues in­stilled in her gave her that ex­tra dri­ve.

"I grew up know­ing that noth­ing was go­ing to be hand­ed to me, that I had to work hard for what I want­ed and be hon­est and truth­ful about what I are do­ing."

She places spe­cial em­pha­sis on cus­tomer ser­vice. "Cus­tomers are the rea­son my store ex­ists."

Her job is not an easy "eight to four" one ei­ther. "I have to work ex­tra hours to stay afloat."

Gopaul is fac­ing some new chal­lenges with the eco­nom­ic down­turn, but she is meet­ing them head on, she said.

"Ship­ping rates, bank rates, every­thing went up. I im­port items for the store but I'm look­ing at al­ter­na­tives now. I am de­ter­mined not to go un­der. I have start­ed op­er­at­ing the busi­ness on­line too and I'm al­so do­ing de­liv­er­ies."

De­spite her hec­tic sched­ule, Gopaul al­so finds the time to do vol­un­teer work with the Na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Crohn's and Col­i­tis to help raise aware­ness of the dis­ease.She had a word of en­cour­age­ment for oth­ers go­ing through their own bat­tles.

"You can do any­thing you want to, once you put your mind to it, work hard, be hon­est and keep go­ing at it."


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