Omari Joseph, a 2020 Management Studies graduate from UWI St Augustine’s Faculty of Social Sciences, has bested over 3,440 students from universities in 19 countries to win the 2020 “Ideas for the Future” essay competition.
In 2019, Omari won the Caribbean leg of the competition, which is held by the CAF Development Bank of Latin America. This year, he won the overall competition with his essay on the current situation of Latin American SMEs and the best public policies to close historical productivity gaps. He received the Guillermo Perry Award, worth US$3,000.
“It felt really good, especially given the fact that I improved on my previous performance,” said Omari, who was born in St Lucia and grew up in Guyana. “I was a bit surprised because I felt that I failed to reach the benchmarks that I set for myself in preparation, considering that I left several minor errors in my final submission. Regardless I'm thankful to the Almighty and to the family, friends and associates that helped along the way.”
In 2018, Omari won the Eric Williams “School Bags” Essay competition, an initiative of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives and Museum (EWMC) at UWI St Augustine’s Alma Jordan Library. He attributed his success to learning from past mistakes and striving to do better.
“Taking time to review my failures and learn from them is a big reason for my success in essay writing,” he said. “Though I won the Trinidad leg in the previous edition, I fell short in the regional leg. I reviewed my essay and tried to determine the areas where I fell short and made the effort to improve my writing. The main difficulty is always striking a balance between readability, clarity and being sufficiently informative. I can also say I've had a lot of practice as I've been writing for competitions since I was about 14 years old. Consequently, I have many failures and some triumphs that gave me rich experiences to draw from.”
The essay identified areas that should be addressed through policy interventions that help to improve the global competitiveness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
In a statement on Omari’s victory, CAF’s Gianpiero Leoncini, Country Representative for Trinidad and Tobago, said it was a “remarkable accomplishment” and his essay was “deemed outstanding by an international panel”.
On his future plans, Omari said, “I plan to find employment, having recently graduated from UWI. In my spare time I will continue to write for competitions as well as working on some of my own ideas. I plan to complete some longer format work in the future, however, this requires much thought and preparation time, which escapes me at present.”
