Cherisse Moe

French Am­bas­sador Guil­laume Pierre opened his of­fi­cial res­i­dence in St Clair on June 24 to host a net­work­ing re­cep­tion cel­e­brat­ing 50 young women from the Young Women Em­pow­ered to Serve (YES) Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme, de­clar­ing the space a haven for wor­thy caus­es.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia just be­fore the of­fi­cial start, Pierre shared that the evening held a lot of mean­ing for him, not­ing that sup­port­ing lo­cal youth and women’s em­pow­er­ment aligns close­ly with his mis­sion on the is­land. He first ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go as a young boy in April 1978, spend­ing two years here be­fore trav­el­ling across the globe and even­tu­al­ly re­turn­ing as am­bas­sador.

His con­nec­tion to the is­land is ev­i­dent in his ap­pre­ci­a­tion for lo­cal cui­sine. Some of his favourites in­clude callaloo soup, bake and shark, roti, aloo pie and pom­mer­ac crum­ble. “Dou­bles too! But not every day,” he said.

So when a group pro­mot­ing women’s lead­er­ship re­quest­ed his sup­port for the re­cep­tion, Pierre read­i­ly of­fered the venue. “We have a beau­ti­ful house. It is a very im­por­tant house for Trinidad and To­ba­go and I make sure that it’s avail­able for events like these.”

The event, which com­mem­o­rat­ed the In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Women in Diplo­ma­cy, marked the cul­mi­na­tion of Co­hort Three of YES. Es­tab­lished by the Women Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans of Trinidad and To­ba­go (WPTT), the pro­gramme aims to re­move so­cio-eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal bar­ri­ers that hin­der women from hold­ing top po­si­tions. From a com­pet­i­tive pool of 106 ap­pli­ca­tions, 50 com­plet­ed the in­ten­sive weeks of train­ing.

WPTT pres­i­dent Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, in de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the diplo­mat­ic mis­sions that part­nered with the ini­tia­tive through ac­tive men­tor­ship. “Op­ti­mal na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment can on­ly be achieved when women are af­ford­ed equal op­por­tu­ni­ties to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly and mean­ing­ful­ly in lead­er­ship,” she not­ed.

One of the ob­jec­tives of the pro­gramme is to ex­pose par­tic­i­pants to in­flu­ence in its many forms. While many peo­ple tra­di­tion­al­ly as­so­ciate it sole­ly with pol­i­tics, Beck­les said lead­er­ship al­so takes place in in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion, mul­ti­lat­er­al en­gage­ment and the build­ing of re­la­tion­ships be­tween na­tions. She was par­tic­u­lar­ly pleased with the “sheer vol­ume” of in­ter­est in YES, stat­ing that, “It gives us great con­fi­dence that the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go is bright and that the next gen­er­a­tion is pre­pared to step for­ward and make a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence.”

A ma­jor fo­cal point of this year’s life­cy­cle was the diplo­ma­cy practicum, an ini­tia­tive orig­i­nal­ly con­cep­tu­alised by the Am­bas­sador of the King­dom of the Nether­lands, Cor­nelis Wil­hel­mus Hers­bach, and ex­pand­ed to part­ner with ten in­ter­na­tion­al mis­sions through the co­or­di­na­tion of Stu­art Shaw at the Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion.

In a sub­se­quent chat with Guardian Me­dia, WPTT lead­er­ship mem­ber Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan in­di­cat­ed that this par­tic­u­lar evo­lu­tion gave the co­hort a far wider scope of pub­lic ser­vice. “What be­gan last year as a valu­able en­gage­ment with the diplo­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ty has de­vel­oped in­to a gen­uine lead­er­ship practicum. It has un­doubt­ed­ly be­come one of the most in­no­v­a­tive fea­tures of Co­hort 3. The gen­eros­i­ty with which the par­tic­i­pat­ing mis­sions em­braced this ini­tia­tive, opened their doors, shared their ex­pe­ri­ences, and men­tored our par­tic­i­pants has been tru­ly re­mark­able.”

Pro­gramme par­tic­i­pant Jo­van­ni Ram­samooj, a 21-year-old UWI law stu­dent, found that the op­por­tu­ni­ty matched her in­di­vid­ual am­bi­tions for civic in­volve­ment. “I al­ways want­ed to get in­volved in some sort of lead­er­ship out­side of school and to do some­thing in gov­er­nance,” she told us, re­flect­ing on the April-to-Au­gust term. “See­ing that it was all fe­male, I loved the agen­da.”

She point­ed to spend­ing a full day at the British High Com­mis­sion as a ma­jor high­light, along­side learn­ing for­mal eti­quette at the Red House. “Now when I go out to din­ner I can ap­ply my eti­quette skills there,” Ram­samooj not­ed, en­cour­ag­ing oth­er young women to step past their fears and do some­thing mean­ing­ful for their fu­tures. “Don’t be afraid of try­ing new things. You nev­er know. Go brave and go bold. Push your­self out of your com­fort zone.”

Dur­ing the net­work­ing ses­sion, par­tic­i­pants were en­cour­aged to vis­it dif­fer­ent ta­bles where var­i­ous top­ics were dis­cussed. Chat­ting with a group of stu­dents, Beck­les spoke about the im­por­tance of re­spon­si­bly em­brac­ing ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence rather than be­ing afraid of the tech­nol­o­gy, urg­ing the young lead­ers to re­main knowl­edge­able and vig­i­lant.

She ad­mit­ted to be­ing “para­noid” about AI safe­ty in the past, some­thing she con­scious­ly had to work on.

Shar­ing her own sto­ry from near­ly a decade ago, she joked about her anx­i­ety over a Ser­e­na Williams ten­nis match where her tick­et was sent to her phone. “I thought I was go­ing to have to get it print­ed and walk with the ac­tu­al pa­per tick­et. I didn’t know,” she laughed, stat­ing how fast sys­tems adapt and why lead­ers must re­main flu­ent in emerg­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

At­tend­ing the re­cep­tion was a di­verse cross-sec­tion of lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al lead­ers, in­clud­ing Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Khadi­jah Ameen, for­mer Speak­er of the House Bridgid An­nisette-George, Aus­tralian High Com­mis­sion­er Sonya Koppe and High Com­mis­sion­er of Ja­maica Na­tal­ie Camp­bell-Ro­drigues.