Fay­ola KJ Fras­er

At just 21 years old, Is­abelle Laquis is al­ready leav­ing a lega­cy of im­pact across Trinidad and To­ba­go. Now go­ing in­to her fourth year at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mi­a­mi, Laquis is the co-founder of Let’s Give Back, a non­prof­it born at the height of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in 2020.

Along­side her cousin Sa­van­na Laquis she start­ed with mod­est goals—pur­chas­ing gro­ceries for fam­i­lies strug­gling dur­ing COVID-19 lock­downs and mass job loss­es.

But what be­gan as a grass­roots ini­tia­tive quick­ly grew in­to a move­ment. Five years lat­er, Let’s Give Back has widened and ex­pand­ed its com­mu­ni­ty out­reach, dis­trib­ut­ing over 1,000 ham­pers an­nu­al­ly to fam­i­lies across the coun­try.

They will be host­ing their in­au­gur­al char­i­ty run, “Grind to Give”, on Sat­ur­day.

This year, Laquis de­cid­ed it was time to try some­thing new. “We al­ways want­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent,” she says. In­spired by a grow­ing na­tion­al in­ter­est in health and well­ness, they in­tro­duced a char­i­ty run to raise funds for their lat­est cause. The idea was sparked through a friend, Michael Pe­ter Hadad, founder of the G2G Run Club, which has been gain­ing trac­tion. With a shared vi­sion, the two teams joined forces to cre­ate Grind to Give—a 5K char­i­ty run around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, aimed at com­bin­ing fit­ness and phil­an­thropy.

The run will ben­e­fit Mary Care Cen­tre, a shel­ter for young moth­ers and their ba­bies that was re­cent­ly com­plete­ly de­stroyed af­ter suf­fer­ing a dev­as­tat­ing fire. Mary Care was es­tab­lished in 1980 with the mis­sion to sup­port preg­nant teenagers, teenage moth­ers, and their chil­dren. The cen­tre not on­ly pro­vides a se­cure en­vi­ron­ment for first-time moth­ers be­tween the ages of 12 and 17 but al­so teach­es the young women to care for them­selves and their new­borns. It of­fers skills train­ing, lit­er­a­cy train­ing, and aca­d­e­m­ic cours­es.

Laquis had a per­son­al con­nec­tion to the home through a neigh­bour—her grand­moth­er’s friend worked close­ly with the cen­tre. Learn­ing about the tragedy and the heart­break­ing sto­ries of the girls housed there, in­clud­ing one case of an 11-year-old preg­nant with twins, deeply af­fect­ed her.

“Think about that for a sec­ond; imag­ine an 11-year-old preg­nant with twins now with nowhere to go,” she says. “That’s why this is so im­por­tant.” The Wood­brook-based home for preg­nant teenage girls was de­stroyed by fire on April 30, and the care­tak­ers are ea­ger to re­build.

Dri­ven by em­pa­thy and pur­pose, Laquis and her team set out to raise funds not just to re­build the home but to re­store the lives and dig­ni­ty of its res­i­dents.

“We have a strong sense of fam­i­ly and com­mu­ni­ty,” she ex­plains. “So to think these girls and women lost every­thing in that fire and don’t have a com­mu­ni­ty, a sense of safe­ty, or be­long­ing—we want­ed to recre­ate that warmth. A space where they feel a sense of pur­pose and sup­port.”

Through de­ter­mined fundrais­ing and a de­tailed spon­sor­ship cam­paign, Let’s Give Back has al­ready re­ceived over­whelm­ing sup­port from busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als alike.

Phil­an­thropy runs in Laquis’ blood. Her grand­fa­ther Dr George Laquis found­ed the Can­cer So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and her fam­i­ly has al­ways been in­volved in char­i­ta­ble work. Even as a child, Laquis felt nat­u­ral­ly in­clined to help oth­ers. Her jour­ney con­tin­ued af­ter leav­ing home for uni­ver­si­ty.

Though it was hard­er to be hands-on while abroad, she was fur­ther in­spired by a one-month sum­mer pro­gramme in South Africa, spend­ing one of her weeks vol­un­teer­ing at a lo­cal pri­ma­ry school. That life-chang­ing ex­pe­ri­ence taught her the val­ue of ser­vice and gave her a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of glob­al in­equal­i­ty.

Now study­ing ex­er­cise phys­i­ol­o­gy with a mi­nor in glob­al health, Laquis is pas­sion­ate about merg­ing well­ness with com­mu­ni­ty ac­tion. “The Grind to Give run is the per­fect blend—it gets peo­ple to move their bod­ies, con­nect with each oth­er, and con­tribute to a mean­ing­ful cause,” she says.

The run is sched­uled for Au­gust 2, be­gin­ning with a 6:45 am warmup at St Mary’s Col­lege Grounds and fol­lowed by a 5K loop around the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah. Par­tic­i­pants can look for­ward to a ven­dor vil­lage, re­fresh­ments, age-group prizes, and cash awards for the top fin­ish­ers.

Be­hind the scenes, pulling off an event of this scale has re­quired ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment. Laquis, with the sup­port of oth­ers, craft­ed spon­sor­ship pack­ages, reached out to over 50 po­ten­tial spon­sors via email and phone, and co­or­di­nat­ed lo­gis­tics with her team.

“It’s been a lot of work, but we’ve had great sup­port from pre­vi­ous part­ners who’ve seen where their do­na­tions go when we do the ham­pers,” she says. The trust built through years of con­sis­tent ac­tion has helped Let’s Give Back gain mo­men­tum and cred­i­bil­i­ty.

What sets their non­prof­it apart is its fo­cus on over­looked caus­es. “Some or­gan­i­sa­tions get a lot of help, and that’s great, but oth­ers don’t even make it on­to peo­ple’s radar,” she notes. “We try to fill those gaps—sup­port­ing the places and peo­ple who need it most.”

From hum­ble be­gin­nings, mak­ing sand­wich­es for the home­less while still in high school at Maple Leaf In­ter­na­tion­al, Is­abelle and Sa­van­na Laquis have grown their pas­sion project in­to some­thing that tru­ly changes lives.

Look­ing ahead, Laquis hopes Grind to Give be­comes an an­nu­al event and dreams of ex­pand­ing Let’s Give Back in­to a full-scale foun­da­tion. “I don’t know ex­act­ly what the fu­ture holds, but I know I want to keep do­ing this,” she says.

Whether it’s through health, ed­u­ca­tion, or em­pow­er­ment, her goal is to make a last­ing dif­fer­ence. Her grand­moth­er said she has “a gift”—an in­nate dri­ve to up­lift oth­ers. Laquis, ever hum­ble, sim­ply calls it pur­pose.

As Laquis says, “Every­thing adds up. Small acts, over time, lead to big change.”

You can reg­is­ter for the race on Race Ros­ter and fol­low the jour­ney on In­sta­gram at @lets­give­back­tt.