In the heart of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s health­care his­to­ry lies a qui­et rev­o­lu­tion led by a woman whose vi­sion, grit, and com­pas­sion rad­i­cal­ly re­shaped how the coun­try cares for its most frag­ile lives.

At 18 years old, most teenagers are think­ing about uni­ver­si­ty, friend­ships, and the ex­cit­ing jour­ney in­to adult­hood. For Shiv­ali Ram­bachan, how­ev­er, life took a dras­tic and un­prece­dent­ed de­tour.

He is one of the last of the bards whose voice was raised in ca­lyp­so in the 1970 surge for Black Pow­er. At 84 years old, clear-sight­ed and an­a­lyt­i­cal, Broth­er Valenti­no told me how he came to be recog­nised as the “Peo­ple’s Ca­lyp­son­ian” back in the “Roar­ing Sev­en­ties”.

Eman­ci­pa­tion, for Za­kiya Naila Uzoma Wada­da, is the on­go­ing jour­ney to­ward ful­ly re­al­is­ing our African selves. It’s a de­f­i­n­i­tion that guides and shapes her life and lead­er­ship as ex­ec­u­tive chair of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee (ESC) of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

With a new in­ter­im ex­ec­u­tive led by Richard Forteau and pow­ered by sup­port from An­gos­tu­ra Lim­it­ed, Pan­land Lim­it­ed, the Min­istry of Cul­ture, and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC), this year’s Laven­tille Steel­band Fes­ti­val (LSF) promis­es to be a spec­tac­u­lar show­case of T&T’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment.

It was a night of mu­sic, mem­o­ries, and mag­nif­i­cent per­for­mances on Ju­ly 26, as the lega­cy of the Mighty Spar­row was ho­n­oured in grand style. The South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (SAPA) came alive for Thank You, Spar­row—a star-stud­ded mu­si­cal trib­ute to the Ca­lyp­so King of the World, Slinger Fran­cis­co ORTT.

Colom­bian Am­bas­sador to T&T, Sid­ney Bush Howard, has de­scribed his two-year tenure in the coun­try as “ex­tra­or­di­nary,” high­light­ing the deep­en­ing of ties be­tween Colom­bia and the wider Caribbean.

ANSA McAL Lim­it­ed served as the of­fi­cial spon­sor of the Women in Lead­er­ship (WIL) 2025 Net­work­ing and Cock­tail Re­cep­tion, host­ed by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies – Arthur Lok Jack Glob­al School of Busi­ness (UWI-ALJGSB).

D r Justin So­bion, a se­nior tu­tor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Auck­land’s Law Fac­ul­ty, is a pas­sion­ate cham­pi­on for plan­et stew­ard­ship and Earth trustee­ship—con­tin­u­al­ly ques­tion­ing who owns our plan­et and who will pro­tect it for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

Tal­ent­ed teen pan­nist and as­pir­ing me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer Kai Caruth of Bish­op’s High School (BHS), To­ba­go, was ho­n­oured with the 2025 Nevin Roach Award for steel­pan ex­cel­lence on Ju­ly 4. The award was pre­sent­ed dur­ing the school’s grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, where Caruth al­so of­fi­cial­ly com­plet­ed his stud­ies, re­ceiv­ing his cer­tifi­cate from An­gli­can Bish­op Rev­erend Claude Berkley.

Care­nage-born Chris­t­ian and de­vo­tion­al artiste Jaron Nurse will share tonight’s stage with award-win­ning Amer­i­can-based gospel artiste CeCe Winans.

Sherisse Khan, a 24-year-old vo­cal­ist, in­stru­men­tal­ist, and cul­tur­al ad­vo­cate, is re­shap­ing T&T’s mu­si­cal land­scape—one root­ed in rich tra­di­tion yet tuned to the pulse of a new gen­er­a­tion.