Sian Cuffy Young is the founder and CEO of a so­cial en­ter­prise called Siel En­vi­ron­men­tal Ser­vices Lim­it­ed. Re­cip­i­ent of a Ful­bright Hu­bert Humphrey Fel­low­ship Pro­gramme schol­ar­ship from Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, Sian spe­cialised in quar­ry re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and is al­so a Col­orado Cer­ti­fied En­vi­ron­men­tal Ed­u­ca­tor. She works pri­mar­i­ly with small to medi­um-sized busi­ness­es to help them add an en­vi­ron­men­tal side to their prod­ucts and ser­vices and con­ducts waste au­dits. The young en­tre­pre­neur has an on­line teach­ing plat­form for waste re­lat­ed cours­es and has de­vel­oped a chil­dren’s arm, all de­vot­ed to waste ed­u­ca­tion. She is an over­flow­ing foun­tain of knowl­edge and in­for­ma­tion and has worked in the field for over 14 years. Al­though when she just start­ed her busi­ness she had no mon­ey or any sav­ings, her pas­sion and de­sire to trans­form the way peo­ple think and act to­wards waste in Trinidad and To­ba­go got her through the tough times and now to a place where she can proud­ly stand firm­ly as a woman in busi­ness. As she con­tin­ues to learn and grow, she has con­tin­ued to find ways to get go­ing with noth­ing, first­ly, by util­is­ing as many free op­por­tu­ni­ties un­til she can make mon­ey.

Mikelle Singh is an en­thu­si­as­tic, grow­ing en­tre­pre­neur. Her ca­reer in Hu­man Re­sources be­gan even be­fore she at­tend­ed the School of Busi­ness and Com­put­er Sci­ence where she pur­sued a course of study in Busi­ness Man­age­ment. This ed­u­ca­tion con­tin­ues to con­tribute to the ad­vance­ment of her ca­reer and in the day-to-day op­er­a­tions of her busi­ness­es. It was dur­ing the ear­ly stages of her Hu­man Re­sources ca­reer when the spark to re­late to oth­ers on a new and more in­ti­mate lev­el was formed. Mikelle then pur­sued pro­fes­sion­al ac­cred­i­ta­tions in make­up artistry and launched her first busi­ness, Kiss and Make­up by Mikelle in 2016. Her en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it fur­ther pro­pelled her to launch Prop­Up.TT, a pho­to booth ser­vice, two years lat­er. As a moth­er of one, Mikelle val­ues fam­i­ly time and sim­ple plea­sures in life.

When I went to the ate­lier in Bel­mont to se­lect gar­ments for the cov­er shoot with the Free­town Trin­i­ty, I was at once re­freshed up­on ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the breath­ing tex­tiles and the easy-on-the-eye coloura­tions which com­pose the ‘Clean Slate’ col­lec­tion. I felt a nat­ur­al and com­pelling con­nec­tion to that par­tic­u­lar aes­thet­ic as far as styling the ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly tal­ent­ed trio who ex­ude a cor­rel­a­tive nat­ur­al, unique and above all push­ing-the-en­ve­lope ap­peal.

By now you should be fa­mil­iar with the Caribbean ur­ban pop band Free­town Col­lec­tive. Known and loved for its unique and en­er­gis­ing mu­sic that ex­plores the hu­man con­di­tion and re­al­i­ties of our be­ing that car­ries pro­found mean­ing, Free­town was formed by two friends and spo­ken-word artists, Muham­mad Muwak­il and Lou Lyons, in Au­gust 2010. How­ev­er, the fam­i­ly ex­pand­ed when they added the “Trin­i­ty”, three sup­port­ing vo­cal­ists Shan­na Joseph, Ma­lene Joseph and Tis­han­na Williams. To­day the group’s dis­tinc­tive style is eas­i­ly iden­ti­fied not on­ly by the pow­er­ful duo that is Muham­mad and Lou but now the Trin­i­ty who bring their own mu­si­cal­i­ty, rhythm and flavour that seam­less­ly make the mu­sic whole.

Sim­mone Ed­win will wow you with her gourmet dish­es made sim­ple. In her week­ly col­umn, we will fea­ture her fan­cy-sound­ing but easy-peasy recipes. You will be able to wow your friends with im­pres­sive dish­es due to her per­fect­ly ex­plained and thor­ough tech­niques.

Sim­mone Ed­win will wow you with her gourmet dish­es made sim­ple. In her week­ly col­umn, we will fea­ture her fan­cy-sound­ing but easy-peasy recipes. You will be able to wow your friends with im­pres­sive dish­es due to her per­fect­ly ex­plained and thor­ough tech­niques.

Sim­mone Ed­win will wow you with her gourmet dish­es made sim­ple. In her week­ly col­umn, we will fea­ture her fan­cy-sound­ing but easy-peasy recipes. You will be able to wow your friends with im­pres­sive dish­es due to her per­fect­ly ex­plained and thor­ough tech­niques.

Sim­mone Ed­win will wow you with her gourmet dish­es made sim­ple. In her week­ly col­umn, we will fea­ture her fan­cy-sound­ing but easy-peasy recipes. You will be able to wow your friends with im­pres­sive dish­es due to her per­fect­ly ex­plained and thor­ough tech­niques.

Soon, many chil­dren will be out of school but, un­for­tu­nate­ly, adults still have to work and that means they still have to think about meals for the en­tire week. Every­one knows that get­ting take­away for lunch gets ex­pen­sive—and no, eat­ing two dou­bles is not a so­lu­tion to this. Of course, you can take a dou­bles break here and there, but when life calls for a sol­id lunch meal, dou­bles just won’t cut it.

It’s a known fact that food com­forts the soul, and noth­ing is more heart­warm­ing than eat­ing fresh­ly cooked food from the coun­try of my birth—T&T. Liv­ing in a for­eign coun­try makes it more dif­fi­cult to get the lo­cal herbs, sea­son­ings and es­sen­tial in­gre­di­ents that are typ­i­cal­ly used in Trin­bag­on­ian cui­sine.

Gen­uine­ly, I have spent the ma­jor­i­ty of my life be­ing afraid of food. From Yo-yo di­et­ing to full-fledged eat­ing dis­or­ders, I am yet to achieve peace with my body and with food (in gen­er­al) al­most 26 years lat­er. I spent the ear­ly half of my teenage years be­ing as thin as a rail and suf­fer­ing from Bu­lim­ia un­til around the age of 14. Some­times I flash back to the days when I would eat a meal and then sub­se­quent­ly make my­self throw up (at home and at school), not even half an hour lat­er. I re­mem­ber be­ing ob­sessed with the scale to the point where I would be able to recog­nise even the small­est shift in the nee­dle. Food and I were def­i­nite­ly not friends and I dread­ed go­ing out and vis­it­ing peo­ple’s hous­es, sim­ply be­cause the sight of food on a ta­ble or every­one ask­ing me to eat scared me to death.

Dance is great for your health in more ways than one. Phys­i­cal­ly, it keeps you as fit as a fid­dle. It is one of the on­ly Sports (yes, be­cause dancers are ath­letes) that en­gages the en­tire body all of the time. While pas­sion makes a dancer great, a strong core al­so helps. It aids in ac­cu­rate weight dis­tri­b­u­tion which re­duces the risk of in­jury when danc­ing in heels. Men­tal­ly, it keeps the brain sharp by im­prov­ing cog­ni­tive learn­ing as one is re­quired to re­mem­ber chore­og­ra­phy by do­ing it re­peat­ed­ly when per­form­ing in the class. The bonds made in the class can al­so im­prove mood through so­cial­i­sa­tion. Last­ly, it holds emo­tion­al ben­e­fits as well since the phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty of dance rais­es your heart rate and so too, the re­lease of en­dor­phins (the feel-good hor­mones)