Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

An­gos­tu­ra has award­ed 34 stu­dents from 17 schools in the Mor­vant/Laven­tille area for their per­for­mance in the 2024 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment ex­am.

The com­pa­ny award­ed the top two stu­dents from each school a $1,200 book vouch­er and a school bag filled with sta­tionery dur­ing an award func­tion at the House of An­gos­tu­ra, East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille.

An­gos­tu­ra COO Ian Forbes said they took im­mense pride in ho­n­our­ing the stu­dents who had demon­strat­ed ex­cep­tion­al ca­pa­bil­i­ties and po­ten­tial.

“Their suc­cess is re­flect­ed not on­ly in their per­son­al ef­forts but al­so the col­lec­tive sup­port and en­cour­age­ment from their fam­i­lies and ed­u­ca­tors,” Forbes said. 

While Laven­tille Boys’ Gov­ern­ment School prin­ci­pal Carel Lewis agreed with Forbes’ sen­ti­ments, he al­so be­lieves their col­lab­o­ra­tion with An­gos­tu­ra changed the tra­jec­to­ry of the lives of many stu­dents.

“The en­gage­ment through the var­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the so­cial and emo­tion­al as­pect of learn­ing, which might have been lack­ing ear­li­er, so through the ac­tiv­i­ties that An­gos­tu­ra brought on to us, we no­tice that chil­dren are more able to ex­press them­selves, they have de­vel­oped cer­tain skills,” he said. 

Lewis, who has 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence work­ing at schools in Mor­vant and Laven­tille, said he had no­ticed that the stu­dents’ prob­lem-solv­ing and crit­i­cal-think­ing skills had im­proved since their col­lab­o­ra­tion with An­gos­tu­ra. 

The school prin­ci­pal said the stu­dents seemed to ap­pre­ci­ate the school en­vi­ron­ment more.

“There­fore, we have no­ticed over the years that the drop out rate has de­creased, the vi­o­lence and in­dis­ci­pline has de­creased, as a mat­ter of fact, it has come down to ze­ro now, so we are very hap­py about that, we are elat­ed,” he said. 

Prin­ci­pal of Our La­dy of Laven­tille RC, Louanne Phillip-Her­rera, shared sim­i­lar grat­i­tude to An­gos­tu­ra and what they had done for stu­dents in sur­round­ing schools. 

“We are grate­ful that they even think of us,” she said. 

She said the Ar­row In­ter­ven­tion Pro­gramme that An­gos­tu­ra sup­port­ed boost­ed the stu­dents’ read­ing achieve­ment over the years. 

Fea­ture Speak­er and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian told the stu­dents that “it takes a vil­lage to raise a child,”  and they were blessed to have An­gos­tu­ra as part of that vil­lage. 

“I have ad­vice for the young ones now go­ing off to form one: be good, al­ways be good, do the right thing be­cause it is the right thing to do, be kind, be kind to your­self but al­so to oth­ers, and fi­nal­ly choose wise­ly,” she said. 

She be­lieves the mem­bers of the board of di­rec­tors at An­gos­tu­ra pos­sess these char­ac­ter­is­tics and demon­strate them through cor­po­rate phil­an­thropy.