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Saturday, May 17, 2025

First Commonwealth Point of Light winner reminisces on award from Queen

by

Charles Kong Soo
973 days ago
20220918
 Trinidadian Len Peters honoured by the late Queen Elizabeth II for his voluntary service protecting endangered turtle species with a Commonwealth Point of Light award.

Trinidadian Len Peters honoured by the late Queen Elizabeth II for his voluntary service protecting endangered turtle species with a Commonwealth Point of Light award.

CHARLES KONG SOO

charles.kong­soo@guardian.co.tt

If not for COVID-19, Trin­bag­on­ian Len Pe­ters, the first Com­mon­wealth Points of Light re­cip­i­ent in 2018 would have been able to re­ceive his his­to­ry-mak­ing award in per­son from the late Queen Eliz­a­beth II who passed away on Sep­tem­ber 8.

The tur­tle con­ser­va­tion­ist and chair­man of the Grande Riv­iere Na­ture Tour Guides As­so­ci­a­tion (GRNT­GA) was be­stowed the ho­n­our by the queen in recog­ni­tion of his ex­cep­tion­al vol­un­tary ser­vice in pro­tect­ing en­dan­gered tur­tle species.

The Com­mon­wealth Points of Light Awards cel­e­brate in­spi­ra­tional acts of vol­un­teer­ing across the Com­mon­wealth and help in­spire oth­ers to make their own con­tri­bu­tion to tack­ling some of the great­est so­cial chal­lenges of our time.

Due to world­wide COVID-19 re­stric­tions at the time, the award cer­e­mo­ny was held on­line with Queen Eliz­a­beth II cel­e­brat­ing and con­vers­ing with three win­ners of the Com­mon­wealth Points of Light award, in­clud­ing Pe­ters, Niko­let­ta Poly­dorou, a mu­sic teacher from Cyprus, and Ruy San­tos from Mozam­bique on No­vem­ber 29, 2020.

Pe­ters' award was shipped to the British High Com­mis­sion in Port-of-Spain and a re­cep­tion was held for him un­der the aus­pices of the then British high com­mis­sion­er Tim Stew.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian, Pe­ters said ''If it wasn't for COVID-19 I would have met the queen in per­son at Wind­sor Cas­tle. On her pass­ing, you can tell how much she was loved by her peo­ple, fam­i­ly, world lead­ers and cit­i­zens from all around the world.

Pupils from the Grande Riviere Anglican Primary School collect turtle hatchlings from the Grande Riviere Beach.

Pupils from the Grande Riviere Anglican Primary School collect turtle hatchlings from the Grande Riviere Beach.

"It was quite a his­toric event, for my part, I would have had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to have an au­di­ence with the longest-serv­ing British monarch in my life­time.

"The Points of Light award was a new award that the queen de­cid­ed to do to co­in­cide with the UK host­ing the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) in Lon­don in April 2018 to thank in­spi­ra­tional vol­un­teers across the 54 Com­mon­wealth na­tions for the dif­fer­ence they were mak­ing in their com­mu­ni­ties and be­yond."

He said there were dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories, they would short­list the fi­nal­ists and the queen would per­son­al­ly se­lect the win­ners, his sub­mis­sion was in the area of en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.

Pe­ters replied that T&T was the first coun­try to re­ceive the pres­ti­gious award which made it all the more sig­nif­i­cant.

He said there was a lot of pomp and cer­e­mo­ny at the British High Com­mis­sion in T&T, en­tail­ing an on­line sit-down with the queen's staff at Wind­sor Cas­tle.

Pe­ters ex­plained that they walked the re­cip­i­ents through the pro­to­cols in­volved, how they were to ad­dress the queen, and the time she was com­ing on­line.

She asked them to talk a lit­tle about what they did and con­grat­u­lat­ed them for their long ser­vice in their re­spec­tive fields and to stay the course

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with the British High Com­mis­sion­er Har­ri­et Cross who had just as­sumed of­fice, she told him that it was quite an ho­n­our to meet the queen. She met the queen at the 2009 CHOGM in Trinidad, but not in her ca­pac­i­ty as British High Com­mis­sion­er.

He said that while he was watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the queen on BBC a week ago, show­ing her walk­ing in her rose gar­den with Sir David At­ten­bor­ough, he rem­i­nisced that the world ac­claimed Eng­lish broad­cast­er, bi­ol­o­gist, nat­ur­al his­to­ri­an and au­thor had al­so spent two weeks with his group mem­bers in Grande Riv­iere for a se­quence of Plan­et Earth 11. They took him to a school where he in­spired chil­dren to dream, to be the next con­ser­va­tion­ist, and the next bi­ol­o­gist.

Re­gard­ing his con­ser­va­tion work, Pe­ters said that it had con­tin­ued full pace with man­ag­ing the Grande Riv­iere tur­tle nest­ing site which was a pro­hib­it­ed area dur­ing tur­tle sea­son.

He added that they had a very ded­i­cat­ed group of vol­un­teers dur­ing the leatherback nest­ing sea­son from March to the end of Au­gust each year.

Pe­ters em­pha­sised that be­fore the ma­jor­i­ty of COVID-19 re­stric­tions were lift­ed, it was a very chal­leng­ing time for the as­so­ci­a­tion. The beach­es were closed to the pub­lic dur­ing this pe­ri­od, and while they had an ex­emp­tion to be out there pro­tect­ing the tur­tles, sad­ly peo­ple could not come out as it was the group's on­ly rev­enue stream via tours to man­age the site, but their com­mit­ment was there.

Grande Riviere Anglican Primary School pupils collect turtle hatchlings.

Grande Riviere Anglican Primary School pupils collect turtle hatchlings.

Tur­tles con­tin­ued to be well pro­tect­ed, Pe­ters said. This year has been bet­ter as peo­ple were back out on the beach­es, and the group can now do tur­tle-watch­ing tours and gen­er­ate some much-need­ed rev­enue.

He shared that on Sep­tem­ber 9 vol­un­teers from the Grande Riv­iere An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School col­lect­ed ba­by tur­tles in the day­time, and had col­lect­ed over 12,059 hatch­lings over a 20-day pe­ri­od. Pe­ters said that the group al­so spon­sored the stu­dents' school uni­forms. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the EMA, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture's Forestry Di­vi­sion and the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust were present.

Pe­ters said that T&T was a blessed place and one of the few re­main­ing places on Earth that was a cus­to­di­an of the an­cient spec­ta­cle of tur­tles lay­ing their eggs.

He en­cour­aged every T&T cit­i­zen to vis­it a tur­tle nest­ing site in their life­time, prefer­ably Grande Riv­iere to wit­ness the heart-warm­ing phe­nom­e­non, and it was a trip worth mak­ing.

Ear­li­er this year, Queen Eliz­a­beth II, as head of the Com­mon­wealth, recog­nised an­oth­er Trinida­di­an, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor and arranger of Fon­claire Steel Or­ches­tra Dar­ren Shep­pard, as the 220th Com­mon­wealth Point of Light in ho­n­our of his ex­cep­tion­al vol­un­tary ser­vice run­ning pan mu­sic ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes for young peo­ple and se­niors.

EnvironmentConservation


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