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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Dr Esther Pope–Excellence from Beetham Gardens

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1395 days ago
20210926
Dr Esther Pope

Dr Esther Pope

Dr Es­ther Pope, 26, holds a Bach­e­lor of Med­ical Sci­ence de­gree and a Bach­e­lor of Med­i­cine and Bach­e­lor of Surgery (MBBS) de­gree, both with dis­tinc­tions.

She has been nom­i­nat­ed in the 2021 Na­tion­al Youth Awards, host­ed by the Min­istry of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice in the cat­e­go­ry Youth Lead­er­ship: Stu­dent Award Ages (18-35) by MP for Laven­tille East Mor­vant Adri­an Leonce.

Pope's de­meanour, at­trib­ut­es and down-to-earth per­son­al­i­ty en­dear her to peo­ple who meet her; she is still shy, hum­ble and soft-spo­ken like when she was a lit­tle girl. That had not changed even when she was a 19-year-old na­tion­al schol­ar­ship win­ner.

She has that qui­et, de­ter­mined am­bi­tion and is still not com­fort­able in the spot­light. How­ev­er, she in­spires res­i­dents and chil­dren from Beetham Gar­dens with her achieve­ments in the med­ical field. They are proud of her, and she is al­so proud of them.

Dr Esther Pope, right, with her favourite English teacher from her alma mater St Francois Girls' College, Ms Maxine Archer. Pope had given the COVID-19 vaccine to Archer's children at NAPA.

Dr Esther Pope, right, with her favourite English teacher from her alma mater St Francois Girls' College, Ms Maxine Archer. Pope had given the COVID-19 vaccine to Archer's children at NAPA.

Pope vol­un­teers her time giv­ing COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion shots at strate­gic sites through­out the coun­try.

In a touch­ing mo­ment, or To Miss, With Love, the for­mer St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege stu­dent gave back to her Eng­lish teacher Ms Max­ine Archer by ad­min­is­ter­ing COVID-19 vac­cines to her chil­dren.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian on Wednes­day Pope said "I was born at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. I hail from Beetham Gar­dens, more specif­i­cal­ly Phase 4.

"I grew up in a house­hold with my moth­er and three sib­lings but have four ad­di­tion­al pa­ter­nal sib­lings.

"I want to con­tin­ue to be a role mod­el for the youths in my com­mu­ni­ty and by ex­ten­sion, T&T. To in­form them that they are not de­fined by their sur­round­ings and hard work pays off."

She said as an in­fant, she at­tend­ed the All In One pre-school lo­cat­ed at Phase 5 Beetham Gar­dens. Pope then went on to Suc­cess RC Pri­ma­ry School and was in­volved in Track and Field which she en­joyed. On com­ple­tion of the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion, she passed for her first choice; St Fran­cois Girls' Col­lege.

Pope con­fid­ed that she was both ner­vous and ex­cit­ed at that point tran­si­tion­ing to sec­ondary school. At St Fran­cois, she was in­volved in Track and Field and played vol­ley­ball where she was cap­tain for two years. Pope was al­so a school pre­fect and part of the Stu­dent’s Coun­cil.

While in sec­ondary school, she start­ed to vol­un­teer at the Love­un­til Foun­da­tion, see­ing it as a way to help the youths in her com­mu­ni­ty. She shared that when she was a young child she as­pired to be a teacher but soon dis­cov­ered that she had a love for the Sci­ences as well.

The ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing both grand­moth­ers pass away, on­ly months apart, due to Non-Com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases helped guide her ca­reer path. Pope added that they were both very young and death could have been pre­vent­ed if they were ed­u­cat­ed on their med­ical con­di­tions.

It was a com­bi­na­tion of want­i­ng to ed­u­cate peo­ple who did not have ac­cess to cer­tain knowl­edge and her love for the Sci­ences that guid­ed her de­ci­sion to be­come a doc­tor.

Ac­cord­ing to Pope, she did the CSEC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions at St Fran­cois Girls’ Col­lege and was a re­cip­i­ent of a schol­ar­ship in Nat­ur­al Sci­ences.

Pope then ap­plied to the UWI, St Au­gus­tine to pur­sue a de­gree in

Bach­e­lor of Med­i­cine and Bach­e­lor of Surgery (MBBS), she was ac­cept­ed but was de­ferred for a year.

Dur­ing that year, she took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to host Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion class­es, as well as con­tin­ue her vol­un­teer work at the Love­un­til Foun­da­tion.

Pope re­vealed that sev­er­al junc­tures on her jour­ney were not with­out dif­fi­cul­ty. There were fi­nan­cial is­sues as her moth­er worked at a very low-in­come job and her fa­ther was a mar­ket ven­dor.

She stressed, how­ev­er, that her moth­er en­sured she had what she need­ed, not on­ly fi­nan­cial­ly but al­so emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly.

Pope's fa­ther al­so did what he could. On the oth­er hand, she had a lot of sup­port­ive sib­lings, friends, teach­ers and even coach­es along the way.

When she of­fi­cial­ly en­tered med­ical school in 2015, it was a very high-paced en­vi­ron­ment and she had to quick­ly adapt.

Pope ob­tained her Bach­e­lor of Med­ical Sci­ence de­gree in 2018 and her MBBS de­gree in 2020, both with dis­tinc­tions. She then com­plet­ed a year of med­ical in­tern­ship and had reap­plied for em­ploy­ment.

Cur­rent­ly, Pope is con­sid­er­ing fur­ther­ing her stud­ies in In­ter­nal Med­i­cine or Ob­stet­rics and Gy­nae­col­o­gy, but her op­tions are still open.

Youth


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