Michelle Loubon

Caribbean lu­mi­nar­ies in­clud­ing T&T Paula Lu­cie-Smith-Pub­lic & Civic Con­tri­bu­tions, St Vin­cent's Prof Leonard O'Gar­ro-Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy (a plant pathol­o­gist), and Guyana's George Si­mon-Arts & Let­ters (an ar­chae­ol­o­gist and painter) have been named as The An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean 2012 Lau­re­ates. Michael Man­soor, chair­man of the ANSA Caribbean Awards' re­gion­al Em­i­nent Per­sons Pan­el se­lec­tion com­mit­tee made the an­nounce­ment at the ANSA Caribbean Lau­re­ates at the Tatil Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, last Mon­day.

He said: "We have con­tributed $7.5 mil­lion to ad­vance the work of our Lau­re­ates. Each year we re­view the bi­ogra­phies of sev­er­al dis­tin­guished Caribbean achiev­ers and it has been our ex­pe­ri­ence that there is an abun­dance of tal­ent and a sur­pris­ing­ly large num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als who pur­sue ca­reers of ex­cel­lence with­out great fan­fare." Man­soor al­so said each Lau­re­ate will re­ceive a cheque for $500,000, a medal, and a ci­ta­tion at a cer­e­mo­ny in Port-of-Spain in ear­ly May. The pro­gramme is phil­an­thropic.

Se­lec­tion pan­els

Re­gion­al Em­i­nent-Se­lec­tion Pan­el

Michael Man­soor (Chair)

Mrs Judy Chang (Trinidad & To­ba­go)

Sir Shri­dath Ram­phal (Guyana/Bar­ba­dos)

Sir K Dwight Ven­ner (OECS)

Fr Hen­ry Charles (Trinidad & To­ba­go)

Maj Gen Joe Singh (ret) (Guyana)

Prof Comp­ton Bourne (Guyana)

Sr Paul D'Or­nel­las (Trinidad & To­ba­go)

Mr Christo­pher Bovell (Ja­maica)

Jus­tice Christo­pher Black­man (Bar­ba­dos/The Ba­hamas)

The Mem­bers of the Guyana Nom­i­nat­ing Com­mit­tee are:

Dr David Singh (Chair)

Mr Al Creighton

Dr Mar­lene Cox

Mr Al­im Ho­sein

Mr Bryn­mor Pol­lard, SC, CCH

Rev Fr Mal­colm Ro­drigues

Dr See­ta Ter­ry Shab Roath

Dr Ul­ric Trotz

Ms Josephine White­head, AA

The Mem­bers of the OESC Nom­i­nat­ing Com­mit­tee are:

H E Am­bas­sador Charles May­nard (Chair) (Do­mini­ca)

Mr Er­rol Allen (St Vin­cent)

Mr J Emile Fer­di­nand (St Kitts)

Dr Char­maine Gard­ner (St Lu­cia)

Prof Ger­ald Grell MD, JP, SAH (Do­mini­ca)

Sir Paul Scoon (Grena­da)

Dr Bev­er­ley Steele, LLD, CBE, MH (Grena­da)

Mr Mar­ius St Rose (St Lu­cia)

The Mem­bers of the Trinidad & To­ba­go Nom­i­nat­ing Com­mit­tee are:

Prof Brid­get Br­ere­ton (Chair)

Di­ane Cha­toor

Bro No­ble Khan

Di­ana Ma­habir Wy­att

Rev Fr Ronald Mendes, CSSp

Vin­cent Pereira

Prof Ram­sey Saun­ders

Paula Lu­cie-Smith-t&t

T&T Paula Lu­cie-Smith

Ed­u­ca­tor

Pub­lic and Civic Con­tri­bu­tions

Ad­dress­ing il­lit­er­a­cy

Lu­cie-Smith is the founder and CEO of the Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion, AL­TA, an or­gan­i­sa­tion which iden­ti­fied an enor­mous un­ac­knowl­edged so­cial prob­lem of wide­spread il­lit­er­a­cy in Trinidad & To­ba­go, and the West In­dies, and has tak­en sig­nif­i­cant steps to deal with it. Lu­cie-Smith, a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship win­ner from St Joseph's Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, at­tend­ed War­wick Uni­ver­si­ty, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leices­ter (pro­nounced Lester) in Eng­land where she took a first de­gree in His­to­ry, and a Cer­tifi­cate in Ed­u­ca­tion.

She start­ed her ca­reer as a high-school teacher in Trinidad, at the St Au­gus­tine Se­nior Com­pre­hen­sive School from 1983-1987. In 1990, she be­gan teach­ing an adult lit­er­a­cy class of about 20 peo­ple on a vol­un­teer ba­sis, and in 1992, formed AL­TA, to of­fer free lit­er­a­cy train­ing to adults, and to train lit­er­a­cy tu­tors. AL­TA's pro­grammes have since grown in num­ber and spread across the coun­try and re­gion.

50 lo­cal venues

To­day, class­es are of­fered at 50 venues through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, 59 tu­tor train­ing cours­es have been run, and AL­TA has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Ser­vol, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, the Na­tion­al Li­brary of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and the prison sys­tem. The or­gan­i­sa­tion has al­so been in­vit­ed to con­duct lit­er­a­cy train­ing in Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

What makes AL­TA unique is that all the teach­ing and train­ing ma­te­ri­als are pro­duced by AL­TA to be lo­cal­ly rel­e­vant and to stim­u­late and en­gage lo­cal par­tic­i­pants. This in­volve­ment in the pro­duc­tion of learn­ing ma­te­ri­als has al­lowed AL­TA's mis­sion to ex­pand from lit­er­a­cy to in­clude teach­ing life skills and build­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Be­tween 1996 and 2001, Lu­cie-Smith wrote and edit­ed three se­ries of text­books: the AL­TA Adult Work­book Se­ries, the AL­TA Be­gin­ner Se­ries, and 18 AL­TA Pre­dictable Books.

AL­TA has been recog­nised lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly by in­sti­tu­tions like UN­ESCO, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, the gov­ern­ment of Cana­da and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Smith has been award­ed the Hum­ming­bird Medal (Gold) in 2001, and AL­TA was se­lect­ed as a "mod­el for repli­ca­tion world­wide" by UN­ESCO in 2008.

Prof Leonard O'Gar­ro-st vin­cent

St Vin­cent Prof Leonard O'Gar­ro

Plant Pathol­o­gist

Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy

Cli­mate change pro­po­nent

Prof Leonard O'Gar­ro is a plant pathol­o­gist whose work has been prin­ci­pal­ly con­cerned with the use of sci­ence to treat or erad­i­cate dis­eases that at­tack food crops in the re­gion, and the de­vel­op­ment and adop­tion of biotech­nol­o­gy and biosafe­ty pro­to­cols in CARI­COM. He has had ca­reers as a dis­tin­guished aca­d­e­m­ic and a sci­en­tist who has en­sured that his work is of di­rect val­ue to the long-term sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of the re­gion, in the cru­cial area of food se­cu­ri­ty.

Born in St Vin­cent, Leonard O'Gar­ro en­tered the UWI, Cave Hill, as an un­der­grad­u­ate in 1979. He was award­ed his PhD in bi­ol­o­gy in 1986, where­upon he joined the fac­ul­ty of pure and ap­plied sci­ences at Cave Hill. He was ap­point­ed Pro­fes­sor of Plant Pathol­o­gy in 1999. He left UWI in 2005 to be­come the Unit­ed Na­tions Biosafe­ty Co­or­di­na­tor man­ag­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­gramme project for the De­vel­op­ment of Na­tion­al Biosafe­ty Frame­works. He was re­spon­si­ble for the Caribbean re­gion's im­ple­men­ta­tion in com­pli­ance with the Carte­ge­na Pro­to­col for Biosafe­ty.

OECS im­pact

His work has di­rect­ly af­fect­ed all the coun­tries of the OECS, by pro­vid­ing spe­cialised train­ing to cre­ate crop pro­tec­tion means and method­olo­gies in those coun­tries (and Bar­ba­dos) for spe­cialised or im­por­tant crops in­clud­ing pep­per, toma­to, onion, yams, and pa­paya. He has al­so been key in de­sign­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies' biotech­nol­o­gy thrust for and on be­half of Cari­com coun­tries.

Prof O'Gar­ro has been wide­ly recog­nised for his work. He has re­ceived UN­ESCO Biotech­nol­o­gy and In­ter­na­tion­al Fel­low­ships (1993,1987-88), and a Lev­er­hulme Fel­low­ship (1993). In 2009, he was recog­nised as a Caribbean Icon of Sci­ence by the Na­tion­al In­sti­tute for High­er Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search, Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (Ni­herst, Trinidad & To­ba­go). He has al­so been a mem­ber of sev­er­al high-lev­el

in­ter­na­tion­al pan­els on biotech­nol­o­gy pol­i­cy and re­search for agen­cies in­clud­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UN­EP), UWI, and CARI­COM, as well as sev­er­al gov­ern­ment pan­els on sug­ar, cot­ton, and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty in Bar­ba­dos. The next ma­jor area of re­search Prof O'Gar­ro is con­tem­plat­ing is the so­lu­tions to prob­lems an­tic­i­pat­ed from cli­mate change. He is present­ly the Se­nior In­ter­na­tion­al Con­sul­tant/Ad­vis­er to the UWI on Biotech­nol­o­gy/Biosafe­ty.

George Si­mon-guyana

Guyana/ George Si­mon

Ar­chae­ol­o­gist and Fine Artist

Arts and Let­ters

Si­mon's dis­cov­ery can lead to rad­i­cal rewrite of his­to­ry

Si­mon, a mem­ber of the Guyanese First Peo­ples na­tion, the Lokono, is a vi­su­al artist and ar­chae­ol­o­gist who has re­cent­ly (in 2011) made an ar­chae­o­log­i­cal dis­cov­ery in Guyana that might cause his­to­ry books about the pre-Columbian past of the Amer­i­c­as, and world civil­i­sa­tion, to be rad­i­cal­ly rewrit­ten. As part of a team of ar­chae­ol­o­gists in­clud­ing mem­bers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da, Si­mon ex­am­ined a field of man-made mounds stretch­ing hun­dreds of miles be­tween the Berbice and Coren­tyne rivers dat­ing 5,000 years be­fore the present era.

The find­ings pro­vide ev­i­dence that com­plex, pop­u­lous set­tle­ments ex­ist­ed in this part of the world be­fore Stone­henge in Britain and the Pyra­mids in Egypt. Si­mon was ed­u­cat­ed in fine art at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Portsmouth and Lon­don Uni­ver­si­ty in the UK in fine art (print­mak­ing, 1978) and ar­chae­ol­o­gy (field and an­a­lyt­i­cal tech­niques, 1994) re­spec­tive­ly.

First Na­tions' artist

He re­turned to Guyana in 1978 and be­came an in­struc­tor at the Bur­rowes School of Art in Guyana and lat­er the Uni­ver­si­ty of Guyana. At Bur­rowes, he worked close­ly with its founder, the ac­claimed Guyanese ar­chae­ol­o­gist, artist, nov­el­ist and an­thro­pol­o­gist, De­nis Williams, and con­tin­ued to work with, and be in­flu­enced by Williams at the Wal­ter Roth Mu­se­um in Guyana.

In ad­di­tion to his work as an ar­chae­ol­o­gist, Si­mon is al­so a fine artist and teacher. His work (main­ly paint­ing) draws on First Peo­ples' myth, leg­end, and spir­i­tu­al be­liefs. He has had sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al ex­hi­bi­tions in Eu­rope (Spain and France), New York (at the Mu­se­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry), Chad, Bar­ba­dos and Mon­tre­al, Cana­da. But more im­por­tant than his work as an artist is his work as a teacher. In Guyana and the var­i­ous coun­tries he has vis­it­ed (in­clud­ing Chad and Haiti).

Si­mon has set up schools in art and Eng­lish. He has been re­spon­si­ble for ma­jor art train­ing ini­tia­tives in Guyana among his own Lokono Na­tion, in their com­mu­ni­ty of St Cuth­bert's mis­sion, and oth­ers, like the Makushi, and has helped in­dige­nous artists to emerge in­to wider at­ten­tion and ac­claim. Si­mon has been recog­nised by the Guyanese gov­ern­ment with a Na­tion­al Vi­su­al Arts Award, and the Gold­en Ar­row of Achieve­ment.