Sto­ries by

Loyse Vin­cent

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes joined the list of peo­ple call­ing for equal­i­ty for per­sons with Down Syn­drome.

Weekes made the call as she de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at an an­nu­al con­fer­ence host­ed by the Down Syn­drome Fam­i­ly Net­work in cel­e­bra­tion of World Down Syn­drome Day (WDSD) at the Magde­le­na Grande Ho­tel and Golf Re­sort on Mon­day.

World Down Syn­drome Day is cel­e­brat­ed an­nu­al­ly on March 21.

The Pres­i­dent asked that per­sons be on the look­out for “in­equal­i­ties and in­equities” in the way the dif­fer­ent­ly-abled are treat­ed.

“Let us ac­cept that per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to play our part in en­sur­ing that per­sons with Down Syn­drome and oth­er dis­abil­i­ties are ap­pre­ci­at­ed and treat­ed as wor­thy mem­bers of our na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty,” Weekes told the gath­er­ing.

She al­so urged peo­ple to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ed­u­cat­ing them­selves about Down Syn­drome and its ef­fects.

“In schools and work­places, in so­cial and med­ical ser­vices, in the de­sign of prod­ucts and de­vices ser­vices or en­vi­ron­ments, there must be con­sid­er­a­tion of the peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and the de­ter­mi­na­tion to have in­equity re­vealed.”

She added that an ef­fort must go be­yond de­ter­mi­na­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion and trans­late in­to ac­tion.

“The re­al goal of all of this is at­ti­tu­di­nal change so that per­sons with Down Syn­drome are val­ued, ac­cept­ed, in­clud­ed and in­cor­po­rat­ed seam­less­ly in­to na­tion­al life,” Weekes added.

This year’s con­fer­ence fea­tured the US-born Em­manuel Bish­op, who al­so has Down Syn­drome. He is a fa­mous vi­o­lin­ist and is mul­ti­lin­gual, with the abil­i­ty to speak Eng­lish, French, Latin and Span­ish. Em­manuel has al­so ex­celled in sports, hav­ing won sev­er­al Spe­cial Olympics medals in swim­ming and golf.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, Em­manuel, a de­vout Chris­t­ian, said he be­lieves his pur­pose in life is to show that per­sons with Down Syn­drome can achieve great heights.