The team of Gen­e­sis Pereira, Lak­isha May­nard, Saman­tha Singh and Jabari Vial­va have brought de­bat­ing glo­ry to San Fer­nan­do Cen­tral Sec­ondary School, af­ter they lift­ed the ti­tle in the sea­son fi­nale of CNC3’s “Make Your Point,” which was tele­vised last evening.

De­bat­ing be­fore an au­di­ence at the Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine cam­pus, first speak­er May­nard and her team beat Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas, to se­cure the $10,000 first prize.

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege walked away with $4,000 for their ef­forts.

The de­bate top­ic was “Should we have manda­to­ry na­tion­al ser­vice for chil­dren 15 years and over?”

Com­ment­ing on their achieve­ment in the in­au­gur­al sea­son of the com­pe­ti­tion af­ter­wards, May­nard, a Form Five stu­dent at “Mod Sec,” as the school is pop­u­lar­ly called, said, “It was scary. I feel as the first speak­er, it’s your job to set the mo­men­tum for the team, but in hind­sight, it was a fan­tas­tic ex­pe­ri­ence. For any­one out there, I say go for it.

“Make sure you have a strong team be­cause that is what makes the dif­fer­ence. I learned the pow­er of speech, the pow­er of be­ing in­ten­tion­al in what you say and the im­por­tance of talk­ing to peo­ple in a re­cep­tive man­ner and the dif­fer­ent styles of speech.”

Team­mate and re­but­tal speak­er Pereira, who is in Form Six, added, “Go­ing in­to a dis­cus­sion, I’m think­ing the whole coun­try, peo­ple I don’t know, is look­ing at CNC3, and look­ing at me de­bate so I was ner­vous but hav­ing con­quered it, I have learned from the ex­pe­ri­ence. Your words have pow­er and don’t un­der­es­ti­mate your­self com­ing from a gov­ern­ment school and beat­ing schools like Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege. I didn’t imag­ine that we could come out on top as the un­der­dog school. It taught me to be­lieve in my­self.”

Ac­cord­ing to Char­lene Sinanan-Han­sraj, the act­ing head of the school’s Eng­lish De­part­ment and who took on the role of lead­ing the de­bate club at the school, said the com­pe­ti­tion gave them a chance to test their abil­i­ties against oth­er stu­dents in a re­al com­pe­ti­tion set­ting.

“This gave us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­tu­al­ly put the skills we learned in the club out there, giv­ing the chil­dren the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their tal­ent and build con­fi­dence in de­bate, get­ting that prac­ti­cal re­al stage ex­pe­ri­ence,” Sinanan-Han­sraj.

The pri­ma­ry fo­cus of the event was to am­pli­fy the voice of the youth, en­cour­ag­ing them to ar­tic­u­late and de­fend their per­spec­tives on press­ing so­ci­etal is­sues. From sex ed­u­ca­tion in schools to the role of mu­sic in ad­dress­ing vi­o­lence with­in ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, the de­bates were both thought-pro­vok­ing and in­sight­ful.

Sinanan-Han­sraj not­ed, “I think it’s a great achieve­ment for a gov­ern­ment school to beat what we call a de­nom­i­na­tion­al school. It boosts their con­fi­dence, and the trump card is when we beat Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, that is what gave the team the as­sur­ance that we can win this. I felt a great sense of pride for my stu­dents.”

The de­bate se­ries, span­ning five episodes - pre­lim­i­nar­ies, quar­ter fi­nal, se­mi fi­nal and fi­nals, pro­vid­ed a plat­form for 12 sec­ondary schools to en­gage in mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions on a di­verse range of top­ics.

Apart from the two fi­nal­ists, Bish­op Anstey High School East/Trin­i­ty Col­lege East, Holy Name Con­vent (PoS), Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege (San Fer­nan­do), St Joseph’s Con­vent (PoS), Na­pari­ma Girls’ Col­lege, Queen’s Roy­al Col­lege, AS­JA Boys’ Col­lege, St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege and Holy Faith Con­vent (Cou­va) par­tic­i­pat­ed. Each school field­ed a team of four stu­dents from Forms Four, Five and Six.

Sinanan-Han­sraj added, “We live in a so­ci­ety where we speak with­out think­ing and when you pre­pare stu­dents for de­bate, you are giv­ing them the skills to think be­fore you speak, the whole thought process be­fore bring­ing your point across, do­ing re­search, and not just speak­ing out of the top of your head.” The joy­ful teacher al­so not­ed that the de­bate com­pe­ti­tion helped her stu­dents de­vel­op re­spect and dis­ci­pline dur­ing the process.

“We saw young peo­ple mak­ing their point in a firm yet re­spect­ful man­ner. Some chil­dren may seem very shy but when they come to the stage where we have a small gath­er­ing of minds, the same chil­dren who don’t speak in the class­room, they are the ones speak­ing out, the de­bate is a fo­rum for them to ex­press them­selves.”

In­di­vid­ual ac­co­lades were al­so pre­sent­ed to stu­dents, QRC’s Jon­ah Bood­jar­rat, who was named the Over­all Best Speak­er, Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege’s (Ch­agua­nas) Kovid Capildeo, who took the Best Speak­er in the Fi­nal ti­tle, and Holy Faith Con­vent’s (Cou­va) Anaya Phillip-Pitt, who was named the Ris­ing Star­let.

The judg­ing pan­el, com­prised pro­fes­sion­als from var­i­ous fields, adding their di­verse per­spec­tives to the de­bates. No­table judges were Her Ex­cel­len­cy Har­ri­et Cross, the British High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed gen­er­al man­ag­er Mush­taq, AM­CHAM CEO Ni­rad Tewarie, se­nior lec­tur­er in In­or­gan­ic Ma­te­ri­als, Chem­istry at UWI Dr Richard Tay­lor, di­rec­tor of Health and Coun­selling at COSTAAT Dr Tri­cia Joseph, lec­tur­er in Biotech­nol­o­gy at UWI Dr Ra­ji­ni Haraks­ingh, and Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed man­ag­ing ed­i­tor Kay­mar Jor­dan.

Priyan­ka Lal­la, who was ap­point­ed as a UNICEF Youth Ad­vo­cate in No­vem­ber 2020 at the age of 14, served as the chair­per­son and mod­er­a­tor for the pre­lims, quar­ters and Fi­nal. Chair­ing the se­mi fi­nal round was Da­nia Duntin, an Is­land Pop singer, song­writer, fash­ion mod­el, and so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer.

The event was sup­port­ed by es­teemed per­son­al­i­ties and or­gan­i­sa­tions. Paria Fu­el Trad­ing gen­er­ous­ly pro­vid­ed tablets, adding a tech­no­log­i­cal edge to the re­wards, while vouch­ers from Stan­dards and Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed were al­so pre­sent­ed.

The event’s di­rec­tor/pro­duc­er Robert Du­mas, “The Make Your Point de­bate se­ries has suc­cess­ful­ly set a prece­dent for pro­mot­ing ar­tic­u­late di­a­logue among the youth, fos­ter­ing es­sen­tial skills such as con­fi­dence, crit­i­cal think­ing, and col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

He said as the cur­tains closed on this in­au­gur­al sea­son, it was ev­i­dent that the event has not on­ly pro­vid­ed a plat­form for de­bate but al­so sown the seeds for the in­tel­lec­tu­al growth of to­mor­row’s lead­ers.

Du­mas added: “With the re­sound­ing suc­cess of this sea­son, the fu­ture of Make Your Point looks promis­ing and will con­tin­ue nur­tur­ing the tal­ent­ed young minds that will shape the fu­ture.”