Ryan Ba­choo

Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Don­na Cox, has com­mend­ed so­cial work­ers for their "cease­less ded­i­ca­tion and ef­fort" to sup­port those in need. At the first So­cial Work­er of the Year Awards Cer­e­mo­ny last Thurs­day, Cox stat­ed that their ef­forts demon­strate their pas­sion, per­se­ver­ance and ded­i­ca­tion to help­ing, em­pow­er­ing and trans­form­ing lives.

The event was held to ac­knowl­edge and cel­e­brate the achieve­ments of So­cial Work­ers at­tached to the Min­istry. A to­tal of 39 so­cial work­ers from var­i­ous Di­vi­sions and Lo­cal Board Of­fices were rec­og­nized for their as­sid­u­ous ef­forts to­wards im­prov­ing the lives of the vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The So­cial Work­er of the Year award went to the so­cial work­er with the most ex­em­plary rep­u­ta­tion of suc­cess in the Min­istry’s so­cial work land­scape, Far­isha Mo­hammed, So­cial Work­er, Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Di­vi­sion. Ms. Mo­hammed serves on the Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee of the St Jude’s School for Girls and the Josephine Shaw Tran­si­tion­al Home for Young Women. Her per­son­al mot­to by which she lives is “Be the adult you need­ed as a child”, which has served as a mo­ti­va­tion to trans­form fam­i­lies through build­ing re­silience and em­pow­er­ing chil­dren with a strong sense of self-worth so that they can grow in­to well round­ed and re­silient adults.

The oth­er fi­nal­ists are:

- Vic­tor Joseph- So­cial Wel­fare Ad­vi­sor at the Ch­agua­nas Lo­cal Board

- Nyi­i­da An­drews- In­spec­tor I at the Di­vi­sion of Age­ing

- Aleena Mo­hammed-Kara­math- Ag. Su­per­vi­sor at the Ch­agua­nas Lo­cal Board

“So­cial Work­ers serve as a true tes­ta­ment that with de­ter­mi­na­tion, en­durance, dis­ci­pline and the right at­ti­tude, one can push through and over­come the hur­dles. I hope that your peers can be in­spired that recog­ni­tion at the high­est lev­el is with­in their reach and would con­tin­ue to as­pire to­wards this goal” Cox said while shar­ing some words of en­cour­age­ment to the so­cial work­ers present.