Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment, Fos­ter Cum­mings has con­grat­u­lat­ed Maya Kir­ti Nanan on re­ceiv­ing the award as the Com­mon­wealth Young Per­son of the Year for 2023.

He stat­ed, “I am very pleased to see Nanan achieve this mile­stone at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. Rahul’s Club House was won the award for Youth Project Im­pact (Ages 18 – 35) at the Na­tion­al Youth Awards 2022. In 2021, I al­so pre­sent­ed Ms. Nanan with the Na­tion­al Youth Award for Youth Lead­er­ship - Com­mu­ni­ty Group. The Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice (MYDNS) is ex­ceed­ing­ly proud of Ms. Nanan’s ac­com­plish­ment.”

Twen­ty-year-old, Nanan, a for­mer San Fer­nan­do Cen­tral Sec­ondary School stu­dent is the Founder of the Autism Sib­lings and Friends Net­work (ASFN), a non-prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tion based in Trinidad and To­ba­go that cre­ates op­por­tu­ni­ties for spe­cial needs per­sons. ASFN op­er­ates un­der the name of Rahul's Club­house. ASFN was in­spired as a re­sult of Maya’s broth­er, Rahul be­ing di­ag­nosed with autism.

ASFN is cur­rent­ly ac­tive­ly de­vel­op­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al, so­cial, and skills pro­grams that will ben­e­fit over 10,000 in­di­vid­u­als di­ag­nosed with autism.

In 2020, Maya be­came the first Di­ana Award re­cip­i­ent from Trinidad and To­ba­go, she cre­at­ed the ASFN with the in­ten­tion to make Trinidad and To­ba­go more in­clu­sive of peo­ple with autism and oth­er spe­cial needs. Maya’s con­tri­bu­tion to youth work in 2023, al­so earned her the re­gion­al prize for the Caribbean.