An 18-year-old Trinida­di­an was award­ed sec­ond place in the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed 2014 World Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions In­for­ma­tion and So­ci­ety Day (WTISD) video com­pe­ti­tion. Gion­ie­va Fras­er, who just com­plet­ed sixth form stud­ies at St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, suc­cess­ful­ly com­pet­ed against en­trants from around the re­gion to emerge as the sec­ond place win­ner in this an­nu­al com­pe­ti­tion.

WTISD is ob­served an­nu­al­ly on May 17 and for the past sev­en years, the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tions (Can­to), which is based in T&T, has marked this oc­ca­sion with an es­say com­pe­ti­tion open to stu­dents from the coun­tries of its mem­ber­ship.

A re­lease from blink-bmo­bile said this year the com­pe­ti­tion was changed to a video for­mat and the top­ic was Broad­band for Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment.

Fras­er was pre­sent­ed with the prize, spon­sored by the blink-bmo­bile Foun­da­tion, of US$500 and a Sam­sung Note 3.

Charles Carter, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent Le­gal, Reg­u­la­to­ry & Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary Ser­vices at blink-bmo­bile pre­sent­ed the sec­ond prize to Fras­er and said: "The blink-bmo­bile Foun­da­tion ex­tends con­grat­u­la­tions to Gion­ie­va and all the en­trants. I en­joyed watch­ing Gion­ie­va's video on how a so­ci­ety ben­e­fits from the use of broad­band. At blink-bmo­bile we con­tin­ue to break new ground and lead the way in bring­ing ad­vanced telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy to T&T.

"Our re­cent launch of ex­cit­ing new broad­band ser­vices such as the 4G wire­less ser­vice, the Gi­ga­bit Com­mu­ni­ty in Lange Park, Ch­agua­nas, and the con­tin­ued ex­pan­sion of free BLINK Broad­band wifi hotspots across T&T is all part of our five-year broad­band plan to en­sure af­ford­able ac­cess for all," Charles said.

The WTISD com­pe­ti­tion was open to stu­dents be­tween the ages of 12-18 in all Can­to mem­ber coun­tries. The video en­tries must have been the stu­dents' own work, in the stu­dent's own words and no longer than three min­utes in du­ra­tion.

The win­ner of the com­pe­ti­tion was William Mahler from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Be­lize, who won a trip for two to at­tend Can­to 2014 in the Ba­hamas plus ho­tel ac­com­mo­da­tion, one tablet and US$1,000. The third place went to Al­li­son Ar­naez from St Paulus School, Suri­name, who was award­ed a smart­phone plus US$250 and in fourth place was An­drea Gutierez from St An­drews An­gli­can School, Be­lize, who won a smart­phone.

Speak­ing about the change in for­mat to video, Can­to sec­re­tary gen­er­al Re­ge­nie Fras­er stat­ed: "The ob­jec­tives of the re­formed com­pe­ti­tion in­clud­ed: en­cour­ag­ing the youth to utilise their ICT tools such as mo­bile phones, tablets, lap­tops etc in a pos­i­tive way; ed­u­cat­ing the gen­er­al pop­u­lace about broad­band, its us­es and im­pact and shar­ing the mis­sion of Can­to through pop­u­lar out­reach mech­a­nisms such as so­cial net­works."

Tri­cia Balt­haz­ar, Can­to ser­vice de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er added: "We were pleased with the win­ning videos which were well done and of high qual­i­ty. Gion­ie­va's video came in a close sec­ond be­hind the win­ner. How­ev­er, all the videos re­ceived were very good."

Balt­haz­ar con­tin­ued: "To ap­peal to the youth we used so­cial me­dia to pro­mote the com­pe­ti­tion and in­cor­po­rat­ed a Face­book peo­ple's choice in­to the judg­ing cri­te­ria to gen­er­ate in­ter­est in the com­pe­ti­tion and in­crease par­tic­i­pa­tion."

The ex­pe­ri­ence of mak­ing the video was ex­cit­ing for Fras­er. "I learned a lot not on­ly about how broad­band con­tributes to sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment but al­so about videog­ra­phy and video edit­ing. I would like to thank my par­ents for their sup­port and en­cour­age­ment and God for giv­ing me the in­spi­ra­tion and strength to over­come the many tech­no­log­i­cal chal­lenges."

Fras­er con­tin­ued: "It al­so helped me de­vel­op per­se­ver­ance be­cause I al­most lost every­thing due to prob­lems with my lap­top. I had to start over and push to fin­ish in time for the dead­line."

Fras­er thanked Can­to and the blink-bmo­bile Foun­da­tion for the op­por­tu­ni­ty and end­ed by say­ing, "I would like to en­cour­age oth­er young peo­ple to take ad­van­tage of op­por­tu­ni­ties like this. It helped me a lot."

Fras­er, who is tak­ing a year off be­fore start­ing a de­gree in Aero­space En­gi­neer­ing, is no stranger to ex­cel­lence. She has en­tered and won sev­er­al na­tion­al es­say writ­ing com­pe­ti­tions and holds aca­d­e­m­ic awards for achieve­ments in CXC Cape and CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions.

In ad­di­tion to Fras­er's in­ter­est in sci­ence, en­gi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics, she al­so has a deep love for mu­sic, paint­ing and the lit­er­ary arts. She plays the pi­ano and has writ­ten ar­ti­cles for the T&T Guardian's GIE Mag­a­zine.

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