Car­ol Quash

Over the last decade var­i­ous parts of the globe have tak­en a beat­ing from nat­ur­al and man made dis­as­ters. The dev­as­ta­tion of the In­done­sian tsuna­mi in 2004, the hav­oc wreaked by hur­ri­canes Ivan in the Caribbean in 2004 and Ka­t­ri­na in New Or­leans in 2005, se­vere flood­ing in South­ern In­dia in 2009, and the mas­sive earth­quake that rocked the foun­da­tion of Haiti and Chile ear­li­er this year are just ex­am­ples of "acts of God" that have been re­spon­si­ble for the loss of lives and homes world­wide, con­tribut­ing to the al­ready alarm­ing­ly high glob­al rate of pover­ty. Mean­while, "acts of men" such as oil spills, ur­ban­i­sa­tion, in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, de­for­esta­tion, and slash­ing and burn­ing have clear­ly tak­en a toll on the en­vi­ron­ment. Even here at home, we are feel­ing the ef­fects of cli­mate change and changes in weath­er pat­terns, as the cur­rent wa­ter short­age has forced the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to place the na­tion on a strin­gent wa­ter con­ser­va­tion dri­ve.

We care too

It was on­ly in No­vem­ber last year that the Heads of States and Gov­ern­ments of 53 coun­tries met at the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) in Port-of-Spain to dis­cuss mat­ters of glob­al sig­nif­i­cance, with cli­mate change and glob­al warm­ing be­ing among the ma­jor items on the agen­da in prepa­ra­tion for the sub­se­quent Copen­hagen Cli­mate Con­fer­ence 2009 in Den­mark. But ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Sen­a­tor Hazel Man­ning, world lead­ers, politi­cians and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists are not the on­ly ones in­ter­est­ed in sav­ing the plan­et.

She said con­trary to pop­u­lar be­lief, the spous­es of lead­ers at­tend­ing these sum­mits do not just ac­com­pa­ny their hus­bands and wives on a mi­ni va­ca­tion and ex­pect on­ly to be en­ter­tained. "I think its just me and the wife of the Ugan­dan Pres­i­dent that are in­volved in pol­i­tics. But all the spous­es feel the same pas­sion as their hus­bands or wives about the en­vi­ron­ment and pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion," she said. She said they, like their spous­es, are al­so en­gaged in pro­duc­tive dis­cus­sions and were in sup­port of mat­ters of glob­al sig­nif­i­cance. "We had spous­es di­a­logues and what we found was that the coun­tries were more or less do­ing the same things. The spous­es don't just sit at home and do noth­ing.

They are out there putting things in place to as­sist with pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion," Man­ning said, adding that there were nu­mer­ous ben­e­fits to this net­work­ing and ex­change of ideas. "We cre­at­ed a Web site where­by we are still able to ex­change ideas even af­ter CHOGM is over. "We learn how spous­es op­er­ate in dif­fer­ent parts of the Com­mon­wealth, we get to look at best prac­tice in the var­i­ous coun­tries, we can ob­serve and get ideas from each oth­er." She said the spous­es' pro­gramme was an im­por­tant part of any Sum­mit and a num­ber of In­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies were in sup­port of it.

Not just for en­ter­tain­ment

Man­ning said even what was seen as mere en­ter­tain­ment to the on­look­er has been ben­e­fi­cial to T&T. The open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for CHOGM held at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, as well as the "en­tre­pre­neur­ial ex­pe­ri­ence" held at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre were both mar­ket­ing strate­gies to show­case the tal­ents of the twin is­land. "Dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny one of the spous­es com­ment­ed on our cul­tur­al in­te­gra­tion. She no­ticed that here is a kind of in­te­gra­tion in T&T that is more than just a show. "Our cul­ture tru­ly in­te­grates us, peo­ple are tak­ing no­tice," she said.

Re­gard­ing the en­tre­pre­neur­ial sym­po­sium, fash­ion and cul­tur­al show, Man­ning said the or­gan­is­ing team used the fash­ion in­dus­try to high­light the many tal­ents of T&T. She said de­sign­ers from nine fash­ion hous­es were show­cased, and af­ter the show was over the spous­es bought sev­er­al items to take home. "Imag­ine in some part of the world right now some­one is say­ing I am wear­ing Clau­dia Pe­gus. the de­sign­ers re­al­ly made me proud be­cause the stan­dard of their work was so high," she beamed. Man­ning said even lo­cal food took its right­ful place among the top qual­i­ty items on dis­play. "I re­call how the wife of the Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter ate and ate and ate be­cause the food was so good. In fact, I left her eat­ing," she chuck­led.