Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

“We are now get­ting start­ed!”

That was the pow­er­ful state­ment Howard Uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate and for­mer in­vest­ment man­ag­er An­dre Sealey made as he spoke about his ven­ture, The Make it Hap­pen Net­work, af­ter host­ing their first-an­niver­sary gala on Oc­to­ber 19 at Es­tate 101 in Mar­aval.

The Make It Hap­pen Net­work is a pri­vate events me­dia and com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment or­ga­ni­za­tion, that brings peo­ple from var­i­ous or­ga­ni­za­tions to­geth­er to make things hap­pen for one an­oth­er. This com­mu­ni­ty has in­ten­tion­al­ly and proac­tive­ly mo­bi­lized to sup­port each oth­er and raise aware­ness of the is­sues that mat­ter to them the most. The in­tent is to start a com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment fund to fi­nan­cial­ly sup­port the dreams and as­pi­ra­tions of the tal­ent­ed mem­bers.

Sealey’s mis­sion is to give the cit­i­zens a plat­form to ex­press them­selves and gain ex­po­sure along with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet all sorts of peo­ple.

“I be­lieve that Trinidad and To­ba­go has some of the most tal­ent­ed, in­dus­tri­ous and spe­cial hu­man be­ings in the world and I be­lieve that tal­ent needs to be show­cased in the glob­al are­na and the mis­sion is to iden­ti­fy tal­ent and pro­vide them with the re­sources and net­work to try to make it hap­pen for them,” he said.

In a coun­try as rich in di­ver­si­ty as Trinidad and To­ba­go, few events cap­tured the spir­it of uni­ty and col­lab­o­ra­tion as pro­found­ly as the Make It Hap­pen Net­work’s first-an­niver­sary gala. It was more than a par­ty - a mo­ment in his­to­ry to show­case tal­ent, re­silience and hu­man con­nec­tions.

The event, themed ‘Be­com­ing’, re­flect­ed the com­mu­ni­ty’s vi­sion of per­son­al growth and evo­lu­tion. There were 700 peo­ple in at­ten­dance and the aim was to re­de­fine the con­cept of net­work­ing by blend­ing busi­ness with en­ter­tain­ment, al­low­ing es­tab­lished per­son­al­i­ties to meet emerg­ing tal­ents.

The gala was host­ed by so­cial me­dia sen­sa­tion Ro Dey The En­ter­tain­er who en­cour­aged guests to em­brace the theme through imag­i­na­tive at­tire. The re­sult was a daz­zling dis­play of in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty and flair in an at­mos­phere filled with ex­cite­ment as guests shared ideas and cre­at­ed con­nec­tions that could shape the fu­ture of busi­ness, art and cul­ture in T&T.

One of the high­lights of that night was the pre­sen­ta­tion of the in­au­gur­al Make It Hap­pen Award to an in­di­vid­ual who rep­re­sent­ed re­silience and per­se­ver­ance. The first-ever re­cip­i­ent, Kwe­si Hop­kin­son of Scortch Ra­dio, ex­em­pli­fied these qual­i­ties.

For Sealey, the gala was the cul­mi­na­tion of a deeply per­son­al jour­ney. He took a chance on him­self, leav­ing a ca­reer in in­vest­ment bank­ing to pur­sue a vi­sion that com­bined his cre­ative pas­sions with his knack for build­ing re­la­tion­ships.

“It’s an ex­pres­sion of my per­son­al jour­ney, I had to make it hap­pen and I re­al­ly be­lieve that we all stand on the shoul­ders of gi­ants and that’s why it’s not An­dre Make It Hap­pen Sealey, it is the Make It Hap­pen Net­work ‘cause I un­der­stand it takes a com­mu­ni­ty to raise a child and what it would take to make it hap­pen for in­di­vid­u­als. I was al­ways good at bring­ing per­sons to­geth­er, so now I’m just do­ing that in a more for­mal, strate­gic way by form­ing this en­ti­ty,” he ex­plained.

Sealey re­called that the first event the group did was the Lucky 7 an all-fe­male char­i­ty pok­er tour­na­ment that ben­e­fit­ted sev­en char­i­ties.

“Ladies showed up be­cause it was some­thing dif­fer­ent,” he said.

His im­pres­sive way of build­ing re­la­tion­ships came from hav­ing no choice but to adapt to dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ments as he moved all around T&T through­out his child­hood.

He grew up in com­mu­ni­ties as di­verse as El So­cor­ro, West­moor­ings and Mal­oney, which gave him a unique per­spec­tive on T&T’s so­cial fab­ric. His ex­po­sure to dif­fer­ent walks of life, com­bined with a love for art and com­mu­ni­ty, be­came the foun­da­tion of The Make It Hap­pen Net­work.

Sealey ad­mit­ted that he faced tri­als and tribu­la­tions as he worked to get the or­gan­i­sa­tion start­ed.

“I got chal­lenges off the gates be­cause I left my job with no sav­ings, so I would say that I en­dured some chal­leng­ing times. I know what it feels like to have your phone bill over­due, I know what it feels like not know­ing how to pay rent, how to get elec­tric­i­ty cut.

“I know what it feels like for peo­ple say­ing that they are go­ing to sup­port you and not show up for you but the dif­fer­ence I did this time was that I kept show­ing up for my­self. I was just burst­ing with ideas about dif­fer­ent things that I want­ed to do and I knew it would work, but I just didn’t know how, but the key is not know­ing how, the key is just to start and fig­ure things out along the way. So when you talk about chal­lenges, I could sum it up like this, it was one thing liv­ing month to month, I wasn’t liv­ing month to month, it’s an­oth­er thing liv­ing day to day, I was not liv­ing day to day, I was liv­ing minute to minute,” he said.

The next big project for the Make It Hap­pen Net­work will be a health and fit­ness fes­ti­val in May 2025 to com­mem­o­rate Na­tion­al Fit­ness Day.

Sealey was a mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary ath­lete - a com­pet­i­tive swim­mer who al­so played foot­ball and bas­ket­ball. His moth­er was a teacher and his fa­ther a fish­er­man, so he spent a lot of time in the ocean and his dream is to re­turn to that life.

“That yacht life, that is where life be­gins, so I want to get back to my ori­gins,” he said.