FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

At on­ly 20 years old, self-de­scribed “nor­mal Gen Z” Maya Kir­ti Nanan has al­ready done years of ex­tra­or­di­nary work. With her re­cent ac­co­lade as the 2023 Com­mon­wealth Young Per­son of the Year a fit­ting trib­ute for her ded­i­ca­tion to peo­ple on the Autism spec­trum, Nanan is a young woman un­doubt­ed­ly de­serv­ing of cel­e­bra­tion. She is the founder and one of the di­rec­tors of the Autism Sib­lings and Friends Net­work (ASFN), a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion fo­cused on ad­vo­ca­cy for and sup­port of peo­ple with Autism.

In­spired by her younger broth­er, Rahul, Nanan knew from an ear­ly age quick­ly af­ter his di­ag­no­sis that there would be cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions put on him. One year old­er than him, she felt strong­ly that she was charged to do her ut­most to en­sure as much nor­mal­cy for him as she could. Sim­ply put, she says af­fec­tion­ate­ly, “I just want­ed him to al­so be in­volved in all the things I did, and for us to do things to­geth­er.”

Nanan grew up in south Trinidad, Clax­ton Bay, at­tend­ing Mon­trose Vedic Pri­ma­ry School and San Fer­nan­do Cen­tral Sec­ondary School, be­fore go­ing on to study at the Uni­ver­si­ty of The West In­dies Open Cam­pus. She in­tends to pur­sue a BSc in psy­chol­o­gy or so­cial work. Many young peo­ple seek pur­pose af­ter the course of their aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies, but Nanan has had the rare for­tune to find her call­ing first, and then sub­se­quent­ly align her ter­tiary aca­d­e­m­ic pur­suits to sup­port her work.  

“I have been us­ing my voice since I was 12 years old,” Nanan re­mem­bers, “speak­ing out for my broth­er who is non-ver­bal”. Armed with the courage and com­pas­sion of a much old­er spir­it, Nanan con­fi­dent­ly built the ASFN be­fore her teenage years, as an off­shoot and a youth arm of her aunt Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase’s “Autism TT”.

Since ASFN’s found­ing, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has made a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact in T&T, cre­at­ing in­clu­sive op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple with autism and com­bat­ing the stig­ma sur­round­ing autism in T&T. With grant sup­port from the Queen’s Com­mon­wealth Trust in 2022, ASFN has cre­at­ed “Rahul’s Club­house”, an autism-friend­ly space lo­cat­ed in Mara­bel­la for peo­ple on the autism spec­trum to en­gage in and ac­cess var­i­ous ed­u­ca­tion­al and so­cial pro­grammes. The club­house has suc­cess­ful­ly trained over 350 vol­un­teers to work with autis­tic peo­ple, de­vel­oped a Form Six pro­gramme for autis­tic stu­dents to fur­ther their ed­u­ca­tion, sup­port­ed the train­ing of spe­cial needs teach­ers, and pro­vid­ed a sup­port and coun­selling net­work for par­ents and fam­i­lies.

“Some­times young peo­ple are looked down on,” Nanan ru­mi­nates, high­ly cog­nisant it can present a bar­ri­er to her progress. Even with her acute de­ter­mi­na­tion to en­sure her or­gan­i­sa­tion, as the on­ly one of its kind, con­tin­ues to shine, she has to face a va­ri­ety of chal­lenges.

The sti­fling of youth’s voic­es in T&T is a ma­jor is­sue but does not faze Nanan. “I just have to con­tin­ue do­ing what I do,” she says, “be­cause at the end of the day, I know the val­ue of my work”. See­ing the many lives her work has touched, es­pe­cial­ly the life of her broth­er, she is deeply root­ed and end­less­ly dri­ven by her pur­pose. An­oth­er ma­jor chal­lenge is fi­nan­cial sup­port for the or­gan­i­sa­tion, as they have not re­ceived any fund­ing from the Gov­ern­ment or ma­jor cor­po­ra­tions. In 2022, how­ev­er, AF­SN was short­list­ed for a Na­tion­al Youth Award by the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment & Na­tion­al Ser­vice, which ho­n­oured 25 young peo­ple, bright­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ing the fu­ture path of T&T.

Her heart’s dream is to se­cure con­sis­tent, steady streams of fund­ing for Rahul’s Club­house, and to make it the pre­mier cen­tre for autism in the Caribbean, a cor­ner­stone of ex­cel­lence and best prac­tice that oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions in the Caribbean can be mod­elled on. How­ev­er, Nanan’s mo­ti­va­tions are al­ways in­ter­wo­ven with her dreams for her broth­er, “I just want to know that he has ac­cess to every­thing he needs,” she says, her ten­der, de­vot­ed sis­ter­ly love a com­mon thread in all her ef­forts.

 The pro­grammes of­fered at the club­house are “the on­ly hope” for many young peo­ple with autism, who are very of­ten dis­card­ed by so­ci­ety and mar­gin­alised by the tra­di­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. The AF­SN plans to move in­to a big­ger space and of­fer more pro­grammes and more schol­ar­ships for autis­tic peo­ple from low­er-in­come groups so that peo­ple who need their sup­port have ac­cess to it.  

Al­though she has achieved such a great deal at such a young age, Nanan’s hum­ble and unas­sum­ing de­meanour en­dears peo­ple to her. She stressed that on­ly through un­wa­ver­ing team­work her achieve­ments have been pos­si­ble. In con­ver­sa­tion about the Com­mon­wealth Young Per­son of the Year Award, she end­less­ly praised her team. “I am ho­n­oured that my ad­vo­ca­cy is recog­nised at an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el,” she says proud­ly, and “I am re­al­ly proud of our NGO and all the vol­un­teers who have worked to get the NGO to this point.” The Com­mon­wealth Youth Award with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,000 en­tries from 39 Com­mon­wealth coun­tries, are sub­ject­ed to rig­or­ous judg­ing and stiff com­pe­ti­tion. Re­ceiv­ing her pres­ti­gious award from HRH Prince Ed­ward and the Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, the Rt Hon Pa­tri­cia Scot­land, KC, Nanan de­scribed her shock, and the mo­ment as “ab­solute­ly sur­re­al”.

An ad­vo­cate, a dis­rupter of the or­der and an in­spi­ra­tion to many young women, Maya Kir­ti Nanan is the ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of a Woman to Watch, hav­ing been se­lect­ed among the 23 by Gua­di­an Me­dia’s WE mag­a­zine. Many be­lieve that on­ly the ad­vanced in age have wis­dom to share, but Nanan’s sage ad­vice to oth­er young women to “dream big”, and “nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate your po­ten­tial to change the world you live in” rings true. She en­cour­aged women to use the re­sources they have, whether big or small, to help oth­ers and ef­fect change. A brave and bold yet gen­tle spir­it, Nanan con­tin­ues to com­mit her life’s work to mak­ing safe spaces for oth­ers, un­apolo­get­i­cal­ly ad­vo­cat­ing for the voice­less, and cre­at­ing in­cred­i­ble change in the lives of many.