Stand­ing as a tes­ta­ment that dif­fer­ent­ly abled chil­dren are ca­pa­ble of achiev­ing great feats, vi­su­al­ly im­paired stu­dent Se­bas­t­ian Ram­saran in­spired oth­ers with dis­abil­i­ties, telling them that they can be­come the lead­ers of to­mor­row.

Ram­saran de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the pre­sen­ta­tion of prizes for the Rapid­fire Kidz Foun­da­tion and Re­pub­lic Bank Art Com­pe­ti­tion for Dif­fer­ent­ly Abled Chil­dren at Na­pari­ma Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day.

Ram­saran has Op­tic Nerve At­ro­phy, a con­di­tion that has se­vere­ly im­pact­ed his eye­sight since birth. Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed the 17-year-old stu­dent of AS­JA Boys’ Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, who got five 1s (Math­e­mat­ics, Ad­vanced Math­e­mat­ics, Bi­ol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Physics) and two 2s (So­cial stud­ies, Ge­og­ra­phy) in the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate last month.

Ram­saran told stu­dents that T&T had a good record with the spe­cial needs com­mu­ni­ty, point­ing out that the first prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, had vi­sion and hear­ing im­pair­ments. He al­so point­ed out that Veera Bha­jan, who was born with­out arms, went on to be­come an at­tor­ney. How­ev­er, he not­ed she iron­i­cal­ly had prob­lems tak­ing up her ap­point­ed role as a lay as­ses­sor in the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Tri­bunal. He told stu­dents they live in the tech­nol­o­gy age, so they had a greater chance of suc­cess than in pre­vi­ous years.

“We will do ex­cep­tion­al­ly well. We will be­come the next lawyers, the next ath­letes, and mu­si­cians. We are go­ing to be­come the next big thing, and so­ci­ety, if they like it or not, will have to deal with it, and they must ac­cept that we are go­ing to do great things,” Ram­saran said.

The key to this suc­cess, he said, is re­silience. He ex­plained that re­silience was the abil­i­ty to fail many times but per­se­vere enough to suc­ceed even­tu­al­ly. Ac­cept­ing that they were not like reg­u­lar peo­ple, he said they might have chal­lenges, but how they deal with them would de­ter­mine their suc­cess. He said one char­ac­ter­is­tic re­silient peo­ple have is ac­cep­tance of their re­al­i­ty.

“We are dis­abled. That is who we are, and we must ac­cept it. We must find ways to work around it. We must find ways to har­ness our strength.”

Ram­saran ad­vised stu­dents to be ac­tive and join art com­pe­ti­tions, mu­sic class­es or what­ev­er they might be good at do­ing.

Pres­i­dent of the foun­da­tion, at­tor­ney Kevin Rati­ram, told stu­dents it was their job to make a dif­fer­ence in so­ci­ety. He said many peo­ple think they can on­ly make a dif­fer­ence if they be­come mil­lion­aires or “big shot” lawyers, doc­tors, en­gi­neers, pi­lots or ac­coun­tants.

“Many of us think you must have a de­gree, or a mas­ter’s or PhD to make a dif­fer­ence. I want to tell you to­day that each of us, every sin­gle one of us, has the pow­er to make a dif­fer­ence,” Rati­ram said.

Rati­ram said that sim­ply smil­ing, greet­ing or shar­ing a meal with some­one can change their lives. He said the com­pe­ti­tion was not just about cre­at­ing art but aware­ness that dif­fer­ent­ly abled chil­dren were not use­less but pos­sess abil­i­ties, tal­ents and imag­i­na­tion like every­one else. He said they have a right to the same re­spect and op­por­tu­ni­ties as oth­ers.

The foun­da­tion launched the com­pe­ti­tion in June with a dead­line for sub­mis­sions in Ju­ly. It in­clud­ed pieces from chil­dren with phys­i­cal and au­dio-vi­su­al im­pair­ments and learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties. There were 69 sub­mis­sions from 12 schools for dif­fer­ent­ly abled chil­dren through­out the coun­try.