The CEO of a civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tion, a chair­man of an NGO, and the leader of a woman em­pow­er­ment body com­prise the pan­el of judges who will be re­view­ing nom­i­nees for the T&T leg of the Un­sung He­roes awards.

Un­sung He­roes, a cam­paign de­vel­oped by CIBC Caribbean’s ComTrust Foun­da­tion, is meant to high­light and re­ward peo­ple of the re­gion who are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in their com­mu­ni­ties.

For the lo­cal leg, the judges are Wen­dell Con­stan­tine, CEO of Foun­da­tion for the En­hance­ment and En­rich­ment of Life (FEEL); Robert Du­mas, head of TV Pro­duc­tion and Dig­i­tal at CNC3 and chair­man of the Can­cer So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go; and Ako­sua Ed­wards, founder and na­tion­al co-or­di­na­tor of the Ni­Na Young Women’s Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme.

Con­stan­tine, a promi­nent fig­ure in the me­dia land­scape, has had an ex­ten­sive ca­reer in broad­cast­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and me­dia man­age­ment.

In ad­di­tion to FEEL, his com­mit­ment to com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice in­cludes his board mem­ber­ships with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee and the TTOC Gold Foun­da­tion, all of which fo­cus on glob­al sports, ath­lete de­vel­op­ment, pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion, and hu­man­i­tar­i­an ser­vice.

Du­mas lives by the phi­los­o­phy: “Suc­cess is not fi­nal; fail­ure is not fa­tal: it is the courage to con­tin­ue that counts.” His pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer has spanned broad­cast and dig­i­tal me­dia for the past two decades.

He al­so serves as the chair­man of the T&T Can­cer So­ci­ety, which is a phil­an­thropic role that en­ables him to con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly to na­tion­al health. He is com­mit­ted to forg­ing strong part­ner­ships to ex­pand the so­ci­ety’s reach and ef­fec­tive­ness in serv­ing the pop­u­la­tion.

Ed­wards’ pro­gramme is an ini­tia­tive that has trans­formed the lives of hun­dreds of young women and girls in T&T over the past decade. She has earned nu­mer­ous pres­ti­gious recog­ni­tions, in­clud­ing the In­spi­ra­tional Emerg­ing Leader Award from the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Fo­rum of T&T, So­cial En­tre­pre­neur of the Year in T&T, and the Merikin Award for Dis­tin­guished Lead­er­ship in Women’s Af­fairs.

The CIBC Caribbean Un­sung He­roes cam­paign is open to peo­ple aged ten and over, who have been mak­ing a dif­fer­ence in their com­mu­ni­ties, and have not been high­light­ed or re­ward­ed in any sig­nif­i­cant way.

There are two cat­e­gories un­der which nom­i­na­tions can be sent – “out­stand­ing work in the com­mu­ni­ty” and “an act of hero­ism/brav­ery/ex­tra­or­di­nary act of kind­ness” with­in the 12 months pre­ced­ing the start of the year’s cam­paign.

“The work should be strict­ly vol­un­tary,” said De­bra King, the bank’s di­rec­tor, Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

“We know there are many peo­ple do­ing good work out there, so we want to en­sure those who have not been recog­nised in pre­vi­ous or oth­er award cam­paigns, get the op­por­tu­ni­ty now.”

Can­di­dates can be nom­i­nat­ed un­der one or more of the fol­low­ing pro­files:

* Out­stand­ing work in the com­mu­ni­ty

* So­cial pro­grammes

* The en­vi­ron­ment

* Men­tor­ship

Nom­i­na­tions can be sent to un­sungheroes@cibcf­cib.com ei­ther as a video, no longer than a minute and half; or a writ­ten nom­i­na­tion, be­tween 300 and 400 words, ac­com­pa­nied by pho­tos.

When the nom­i­na­tions for the Un­sung He­roes cam­paign are sub­mit­ted, the judges will re­view and de­cide the win­ner in Au­gust. As it is al­so a re­gion­al event, the win­ners from T&T will vie for the re­gion­al awards, which will be an­nounced in Sep­tem­ber.

In Oc­to­ber, the top three re­gion­al win­ners – the re­gion­al CIBC Caribbean Un­sung Hero and two run­ners-up – and a guest each will be brought to Bar­ba­dos for the pre­sen­ta­tion of prizes at a spe­cial awards din­ner. Spe­cial prizes will al­so be of­fered to the per­sons nom­i­nat­ing the win­ning he­roes.

The nom­i­na­tor of the win­ning project is el­i­gi­ble for a spe­cial re­ward.