May 2010


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THE ANTHONY N. SABGA CARIBBEAN AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE

From pioneer to pioneer

“Now is the Caribbean’s chance to emerge from the shadows of history into the light of the future,” said Dr Anthony N. Sabga, speaking at the Hilton Trinidad a few weeks ago. He said these words not to a gathering of businessmen, but an audience assembled to honour a Grenadian medical doctor, a St Lucian playwright, and a Guyanese community activist. The occasion was the third biennial ceremony to present the Caribbean Awards for Excellence, which bear his name, on April 17.

The opportunity to which Dr Sabga referred was the chance to exploit this particular moment of crisis in the world economy, where the US seems to be straining and the European Union is facing imminent collapse. Now is the time, he said, to ply the Caribbean’s case. And the best way to do this, he believes, is to seek out the Caribbean’s best and brightest, recognise them, and give them the means to produce work, in arts, sciences, and the public sphere, which can benefit the region, and beyond.

This is quite a formidable task in a region so diffuse in terms of population, and so geographically separated. Nominating committees had to be established in each major sub-region (Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, OECS, and Jamaica) and an overall panel of eminent persons whose input would give the selection process the necessary gravitas. Researchers had to be employed to ensure the candidates were worthy of nomination in each territory, and everything had to be supervised from Trinidad.

These logistical challenges were overcome by the small but effective team, headed by Maria Superville-Neilson at the project secretariat, who took Dr Sabga’s vision and the ANSA McAL Foundation’s money, and set about implementing the Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Awards for Excellence in 2005. Its first laureates in arts and letters, science and technology, and public and civic contributions, were named in 2006. They included Trinidadian filmmaker, Robert Yao Ramesar, Jamaican scientist Prof Terrence Forrester, and Trinidadian priest (resident in Jamaica) Fr Gregory Ramkissoon. Each received a gold medal, a citation, and a half-million dollars (TT$).

The ceremony marked the third cycle of awards, and Dr Sabga announced that the awards, as of 2011, would be made yearly. The decision to make such a gesture is not unprecedented: the Nobel Prizes were initiated and funded by entrepreneur Alfred Nobel, and the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Guggenheim families in the United States have given prodigiously to intellectual causes. However, even though West Indians have been awarded Guggenheims, Rockefeller grants and Nobel Prizes, there has not been, till now, a regional prize with similar aspirations. And this is where Dr Sabga saw his opportunity.

Dr Sabga made his fortune building industrial businesses (like the sale and manufacture of household goods, and printing and light manufacture) in the country’s infancy, and continued to expand and diversify into more sophisticated products as the economy could accommodate them. Today, the ANSA McAL group is diversified into media, merchant banking, technology, and consumer products. From the ANSA McAL group the ANSA McAL Foundation was formed, and it has given generously to The UWI, establishing the ANSA McAL Psychological Research Centre, and being instrumental in setting up The UWI’s Institute of Business.

The prizes this year were awarded to Prof Kathleen Coard, a UWI Pathologist, originally from Grenada; Adrian Augier, a St Lucian poet, playwright and Carnival artist, who is also a development economist, and Sydney Allicock, a community activist, who is also a member of the First Peoples of Guyana (a Makushi).

With the exception of Augier, whose job as an economist and technocrat brings him into high-profile situations, Coard and Allicock have worked most of their lives in relative obscurity. In her acceptance speech, Coard thanked the selection committees for “discovering” her, since her profession, medical pathology, is the academic aspect of medicine. Her colleagues, though, were more effusive about her. Prof Carlos Escoffery of Mona, called her the “mother of cardiovascular pathology in the Caribbean” and credited her research with establishing benchmarks which are still in use.

Allicock is from the North Rupununi District in Guyana, and is credited as one of the key figures in developing a sustainable model of tourism which involves international agencies, NGOs, the government, business interests, and communities.

Allicock’s approach is called “the three-legged stool”—with each of native, business and government (and NGOs) comprising the legs. He is also one of the key members of the Iwokrama Centre for Research and Conservation in Guyana, and a member of that country’s low-carbon initiative. He was also instrumental in preserving the indigenous people’s languages, and promoting the education of the young people in the interior communities, which are sometimes inaccessible to the urban areas, except by air. He was overcome during his acceptance speech, and called his receipt of the award “a dream come true.”

The Anthony N. Sabga Awards for Caribbean Excellence can be found at www.ansacaribbeanawards.com, and on Facebook.