RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

In a heart­warm­ing cel­e­bra­tion of re­silience and aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment, six ex­cep­tion­al stu­dents who sur­mount­ed daunt­ing chal­lenges, in­clud­ing the loss of loved ones, were ho­n­oured dur­ing the Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry Schools’ Board 2023 Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion (SEA) Awards Cer­e­mo­ny at the Susamachar Pres­by­ter­ian Church in San Fer­nan­do.

Chloe Boodram, daugh­ter of Christo­pher Boodram, who sur­vived the Paria div­ing tragedy in Feb­ru­ary 2022; Abi­gail Ramdeo; Alexs Mo­hammed, An­jalee Ma­habir, Mikhael Mitchell, and An­drew Jag­gar re­ceived both tro­phies and com­men­da­tions from the Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry Schools’ Board of Ed­u­ca­tion at a spe­cial func­tion de­signed to pay trib­ute to the top SEA per­form­ers of the year.

No­tably, the over­all top per­former in T&T was Ruthvi­ka Ku­mar of Curepe Pres­by­ter­ian, who not on­ly clinched a cov­et­ed tro­phy but al­so a $4,000 prize. Fol­low­ing her close­ly was Sophia Harnarayan of Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian, se­cur­ing sec­ond place, while Aiden Roberts of War­renville Pres­by­ter­ian claimed third place. The ex­cel­lence of Curepe Pres­by­ter­ian was al­so ac­knowl­edged as it was named the top Pres­by­ter­ian School in the coun­try.

In his keynote ad­dress, for­mer school prin­ci­pal Dr Michael Dowlath re­mind­ed stu­dents that they were the he­roes of their own sto­ries as he em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of em­brac­ing their unique life paths and po­ten­tials. Dr Dowlath urged the stu­dents not to de­fine them­selves through the eyes of oth­ers but to recog­nise and har­ness the tal­ents be­stowed up­on them by God.

“Look at your­self through God’s eyes. What has God blessed you with, and how can you use those tal­ents?” he ques­tioned, in­spir­ing the stu­dents to em­bark on their ed­u­ca­tion­al jour­neys with pur­pose and self-as­sured­ness.

He stressed the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of a good ed­u­ca­tion, high­light­ing its role in fos­ter­ing crit­i­cal think­ing, ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, team­work, cre­ativ­i­ty, char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment, and re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen­ship.

Mean­while, pres­i­dent of the Pres­by­ter­ian Pri­ma­ry School Board Vick­ram Ram­lal com­mend­ed the stu­dents for their re­mark­able achieve­ments, prais­ing their abil­i­ty to over­come sub­stan­tial chal­lenges on their path to ex­cel­lence.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, Chloe shared the heart­felt mo­ti­va­tion be­hind her ex­cep­tion­al per­for­mance. She re­vealed that her fa­ther Christo­pher Boodram had be­come dif­fer­ent af­ter the tragedy in which his friends—Fyzal Kur­ban, Kaz­im Ali Jr, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry—all died in the 36-inch pipeline.

De­ter­mined to make her fa­ther proud and bring joy to his life once more, Chloe poured her heart in­to her stud­ies, striv­ing to se­cure a place at her first-choice school.

“I knew my fa­ther would be proud of me if I passed for my first-choice school, and I want­ed to make him hap­py,” she said.

Chloe said she want­ed to be­come a ther­a­pist or a doc­tor in the fu­ture, dri­ven by a deep de­sire to help peo­ple who face chal­lenges sim­i­lar to those her fa­ther has en­coun­tered.

Can­dy Boodram, Chloe’s moth­er and a ded­i­cat­ed nurse, em­pha­sised the piv­otal role of faith in their jour­ney, stat­ing, “With­out God, noth­ing is pos­si­ble.”

Bren­da Moti­lal, the prin­ci­pal of Curepe Pres­by­ter­ian, re­flect­ed on the ex­cep­tion­al achieve­ment of her school, mark­ing the first time it had se­cured the top po­si­tion dur­ing her eight-year tenure. She at­trib­uted this suc­cess to the ro­bust sup­port of the Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (PTA) and the tire­less ded­i­ca­tion of the school’s staff, who worked dili­gent­ly to pro­vide the stu­dents with un­wa­ver­ing sup­port. In to­tal, 41 stu­dents were recog­nised and award­ed dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny.