An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

De­spite chal­lenges and set­backs, stu­dents must not give up but see this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to push for­ward and suc­ceed.

That was the ad­vice from fea­ture speak­er Teoc­ah Dove dur­ing the Col­lege of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ap­plied Arts of T&T (COSTAATT) grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya on Sat­ur­day.

Dove, who grew up in Crown Trace, En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, which is brand­ed as a “crime hot spot,” said when she sat Com­mon En­trance she passed for Ex­cel Edu Cen­tre, which was one of the new­ly es­tab­lished schools start­ed that year as a means of en­sur­ing every child had a place in their zoned lo­cal­i­ty.

“While I ad­mit that I was dis­ap­point­ed at the re­sult, with the love and sup­port of my fam­i­ly, those whis­pers nev­er be­came my re­al­i­ty,” Dove told those gath­ered.

“By the end of Form Three, I at­tempt­ed to trans­fer to Ch­agua­nas Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive, and at first, the prin­ci­pal didn’t want to ac­cept me, main­ly due to the fear, stig­ma and whis­pers that chil­dren com­ing from the school I was com­ing from were dunce fail­ures. How­ev­er, af­ter much trep­i­da­tion, I was ac­cept­ed and did my O and A lev­els.”

Dove, now a so­cial in­no­va­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion for de­vel­op­ment spe­cial­ist, said she even­tu­al­ly at­tend­ed COSTAATT, where she pur­sued an As­so­ciate’s De­gree and there­after at­tained three fur­ther de­grees.

How­ev­er, Dove said she had many hur­dles to jump when she sent out 70 re­sumes but the call for an in­ter­view was not forth­com­ing.

“From that once-lost op­por­tu­ni­ty, my jour­ney has been noth­ing short of ex­tra­or­di­nary, span­ning from cre­at­ing cam­paigns and de­ploy­ing tech­nolo­gies to help save mil­lions of lives at the height of COVID-19; to con­cep­tu­al­is­ing the Caribbean’s first HIV/AIDS so­cial in­no­va­tion, which in­creased HIV/AIDS case find­ings by 87 per cent right here in T&T, to now spear­head­ing re­new­able en­er­gy in­ter­ven­tions across the Caribbean while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ad­vanc­ing cir­cu­lar econ­o­my in­ter­ven­tions in the pa­cif­ic re­gion,” she said.

Dove told the grad­u­at­ing class that no op­por­tu­ni­ty is a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty.  

Al­so speak­ing at the grad­u­a­tion was Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, who called on the 800 grad­u­at­ing stu­dents to be pa­tri­ot­ic.

“You are go­ing to grad­u­ate and there is a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that lies with you, as part of the pro­fes­sion­al cadre of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The same pa­tri­o­tism that was dis­played in 1962 by the young peo­ple and the own­er­ship of Trinidad and To­ba­go that burned in their hearts at that time, must burn in ours and we must un­der­stand pa­tri­o­tism. That is why the in­vest­ment in­to ed­u­ca­tion by gov­ern­ments is im­por­tant,” Gads­by-Dol­ly re­marked.

The min­is­ter, who was a lec­tur­er at COSTAATT, not­ed that she un­der­stood what it meant to be a pro­fes­sion­al and what it meant to give more than one’s pay cheque.