SUNDAY 14 OCTOBER, 2018 – UWI TODAY
7
A l p h a S e n n on , UWI
alumnus and the founder
and executive director
of We Help You-th Farm
(WHYFARM) , has won
US$10,000 seed capital from
the 2018 CEMEX-Tec Center
for Sustainable Development
Aw a r d ( C EME X - T E C
Award). The TT national
was one of three winners in
Award for
DR RAFFIE
HOSEIN
Congratulations to
Dr Ra f f i e Hos e in
who was awarded the
2018 Distinguished
Ach i e vement Award for Pe t ro l eum
Engineering Faculty by the regional
Latin America & Caribbean arm of the
Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPC). The
regional award recognizes excellence in
classroom teaching, research and significant
contributions to the petroleum engineering
profession. Dr Hosein received his award
in June at the SPE T&T Section Energy
Resources Conference. Dr Hosein is Head
of the Department of Chemical Engineering
at The UWI, and Coordinator of the
MSc Reservoir Engineering Programme.
Previously he worked as a PetroleumEngineer
with the Ministry of Energy in Trinidad and
later, as a Senior Associate Professor in the
Department of Petroleum Engineering at
Texas A&M University at Qatar. He received
his BSc, MPhil and PhD degrees in Petroleum
Engineering from The UWI, Trinidad. He is
a registered CEng MEI Chartered Petroleum
Engineer with the Energy Institute (EI) of
London and a Fellow with the Institute of
Materials Minerals and Mining (FIMMM)
of London.
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
PROF.
RHODA
REDDOCK
elected to
ISA
Prof. Rhoda Reddock has been elected
to
the Executive Committee of the International
Sociological Association (ISA).The Executive
Council is elected for a four-year period
and she is expected to serve from 2018
-2022. Prof. Reddock is the first Caribbean
scholar to serve in this capacity. The ISA is a
professional organisation of sociologists and
social scientists founded in 1949 under the
auspices of UNESCO. With a membership
comprising individuals who are members of
research committees and national sociological
associations, its last World Congress of
Sociology held inTorontoCanada in July 2018
was attended by over 5,000 participants from
various parts of the world.
A long-standing member of the ISA, Prof
Reddock is a former President of Research
Committee 32 – Women and Society, and
is currently a member of the Board of
Research Committee 05 – Indigeneity,
Racism, Nationalismand Ethnicity. She hopes
to use her position to strengthen the position
of sociology in the Caribbean region and to
support the development of this field in the
Caribbean region.
Additional Scholarship winner Darren Ramsook
has
created a free online learning platform, eLearnCaribbean,
for CXC and CAPE students who need help with
Mathematics. It is a way of expressing his gratitude for
the scholarship he received in 2015. A former Naparima
College student who recently completed his BSc in
electrical and computer engineering at UWI, Ramsook
said his intention was always to use his knowledge to give
back to the country which educated him.
Last month, when Education Minister Anthony
Garcia said nearly 1,500 students got zero passes in
the 2018 CSEC examinations (out of 11,000 students
regionally), Ramsook felt compelled to launch the free
online programme he had been working on. It can be
accessed here:
Within hours of publishing the post online, Ramsook
got 200 shares and 400 retweets. Since then, more and
more people have been accessing his videos for CSEC
Mathematics.
Ramsook hopes to incorporate interactive videos
for other subjects too. However, his challenge at the
moment is content, and he is appealing to people who
are willing to publish content on this site to contact him
at
Ramsook said he sees this platform as versatile: it is
not limited to students of any particular age, so it provides
a learning platform for older individuals who may never
have had the chance to write the subject due to financial
or other constraints.
The eLearn Caribbean platformwill work alongside
current teaching in secondary schools. “The platform can
make life easier for teachers and students by sharing the
load, as different students can react in their own way to
different teaching methods,” said Ramsook.
Ramsook said he wanted to help transform at-risk
youths into contributing citizens. Some of his “friends”
were led down the wrong path because of a series of
bad decisions, he said. “That was when I realized that
criminals are not formed overnight but are created over
an evolutionary progress starting at a very young age. In
an effort to make a difference, I began helping out my
fellow youths in any way that I could by volunteering in
peer counselling groups and even just helping out friends
with schoolwork.”
During his second year at UWI, Ramsook recalled
there was an element in a course called the Community
Service Learning Project which challenged groups of
students to find problems in their communities and
develop solutions to fix them. This gave rise to his work
on the first prototype of the online learning platform.
After seeing the potential of the platform in Trinidad,
he felt certain it could be used in the wider Caribbean.
“I started working more on the platform from the
last day of my final exams in May and with advice from
one of my key mentors, Dr Akash Pooransingh, I created
a plan of how I should start publishing the platform. It
was only on August 16 that I went public with eLearn
Caribbean and it just blew up since then.”
Ramsook said his desire to help is inspired by his
family, including his dad, a former police officer, who
was left paralysed by an accident from the chest down
because of a reckless driver in 2009. “That time right
after the accident was a very trying time for my family,
but we learnt to play with the cards that we’ve been dealt.
This was really hard on my mom and it forced all of us
to take on responsibilities andmake sacrifices we weren’t
comfortable with. Seeing my dad and family fight their
way through and emerging the positive people we are
today, despite our challenges, makes me believe that there
is a better tomorrow.”
His free online learning platform, eLearn Caribbean,
for CXC and CAPE Maths students, is Ramsook’s way of
creating a better tomorrow.
Courtesy T&T Newsday.
First published in Newsday,
Sunday, September 9, 2018:
.
co.tt/2018/09/09/schol-winner-gives-back/
Schol winner gives back
By
YvonneWeb
YvonneWeb
is a journalist
Darren Ramsook has created eLearn Caribbean to help students learn
Maths.
PHOTO COURTESY T&T NEWSDAY.
the Social Entrepreneurs category of the annual award
which recognises the social impact of entrepreneurs.
Sennon’s achievement was announced by CEMEX
– Trinidad Cement Ltd’s majority shareholder – last
month, on September 7.
“WHYFARM promotes the importance of
sustainable agriculture among young people, building
their capacity in agricultural entrepreneurship and
empowering them to contribute to achieving global
food and nutrition security by the year 2050,” explained
Sennon in a Newsday report on the award.
Alpha Sennonwins
2018 SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR AWARD
