To mark Glob­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship Week (GEW) 2021, an in­ter­na­tion­al ini­tia­tive where young peo­ple in six con­ti­nents gain ex­po­sure to new and in­no­v­a­tive busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ties, the Sun­day Guardian high­lights in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed Me­dia Mar­ket­ing Spe­cial­ist, CEO and founder of Car­li Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Car­la Williams-John­son.

Di­vali is an in­cred­i­bly spe­cial day for mil­lions liv­ing all over the world. No Di­vali cel­e­bra­tion is com­plete with­out the plate­fuls of barfi, ladoo, sweet rice etcetera. These desserts made dur­ing Di­vali are so rich and tasty that it is just im­pos­si­ble to re­sist while every­one in your fam­i­ly in­dulges. It is that time of the year when your di­et plan and ex­er­cise sched­ule are chucked aside. But then days af­ter, the guilt sets in.

As more Form 4-6 stu­dents re­turned to school, the de­bate around vac­ci­na­tion in­ten­si­fied. Al­though vac­cines have helped us to safe­ly con­trol dis­eases such as measles and yel­low fever, vac­ci­na­tion of chil­dren and young peo­ple now ap­pears to be a di­vi­sive sub­ject.

The el­dest of sev­en chil­dren and a moth­er of one, Hal­cian Pierre, grew up with her grand­moth­er in St James af­ter her moth­er mi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States, in search of a bet­ter life.

Patrice and Ger­ard Flan­ders, cre­ators of the pop­u­lar board game Tri­ni Quest, re­cent­ly pre­sent­ed a copy to for­mer Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch Black Stal­in (Leroy Cal­liste) one of lo­cal icons fea­tured in the game.

This Thurs­day, Hin­dus across T&T will ob­serve Di­vali–the cel­e­bra­tion of good over evil, light over dark­ness. On this lo­cal na­tion­al hol­i­day when Moth­er Lak­sh­mi is be­lieved to roam the Earth, be­stow­ing bless­ings of wealth and hap­pi­ness, many will pre­pare sump­tu­ous East In­di­an favourites, wear new clothes and adorn their homes and streets with beau­ti­ful dec­o­ra­tions, in­clud­ing thou­sands of eye-catch­ing deyas.

Delvin Gool­jar, the Good Samar­i­tan who has put his life on hold to ful­fil his child­hood dream, now stands com­mit­ted to tak­ing care of dogs aban­doned and left to suf­fer on the road­sides.

Fash­ion de­sign­er Saleem Samuel, whose bridal, evening and ready to wear cre­ations have earned him ac­claim through­out the Caribbean, re­cent­ly de­buted “Uni­ty,” a re­sort col­lec­tion that com­bines colour and cul­ture to re­flect har­mo­ny.

The first na­tion­al lan­guage of T&T was Pa­tois. This is a fact that not many peo­ple in T&T know now but one that Pa­tois re­searcher, doc­u­men­tal­ist and teacher, Nnam­di Hodge hopes they will even­tu­al­ly learn and ac­cept. “Many peo­ple be­lieve our first lan­guage here was Span­ish. We tend to fo­cus on­ly on our Span­ish her­itage when in fact our first na­tion­al lan­guage was ac­tu­al­ly the Pa­tois. The books show that we were ini­tial­ly a Span­ish coun­try first and then Eng­lish, while com­plete­ly ig­nor­ing the whole French and French Cre­ole part of cul­ture,” Hodge said.

Fol­low­ing the ob­ser­vance of In­ter­na­tion­al Day of the Girl Child, As­so­ci­at­ed Brands In­dus­tries Lim­it­ed (ABIL)—Sun­shine Snacks, Sun­shine Ce­re­als, Charles Choco­lates, De­von Bis­cuits, and Uni­ver­sal Ce­re­als—pre­sent­ed a $88,566 cheque to the Rape Cri­sis So­ci­ety to fa­cil­i­tate the em­ploy­ment of much-need­ed coun­sel­lors to help re­duce the back­log of sur­vivors wait­ing to speak to a ther­a­pist.

That quote by Scot­tish writer and po­et Robert Louis Steven­son is post­ed on the crowd­fund­ing donor wall of three T&T schol­ars, at North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty (NIU) Joshua Be­deau, Jalen Charles and Roshun­da Dorset-Headley, who are des­per­ate­ly try­ing to raise funds to cov­er their tu­ition.

In ad­di­tion, the di­ag­no­sis and treat­ment have ma­jor phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal, so­cial, do­mes­tic and eco­nom­ic im­pli­ca­tions. A woman may lose her breast or part of it, have chemo and ra­dio­ther­a­py and have to live through sig­nif­i­cant al­ter­ations in body im­age as­so­ci­at­ed with breast asym­me­try, skin scar­ring, nail dis­coloura­tion, hair loss and the psy­cho­log­i­cal se­que­lae of these and oth­er fac­tors.