The Amer­i­can Foun­da­tion for The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (AFUWI) will present its Lead­er­ship Award to Dr A. Nor­man Sab­ga, ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the ANSA McAL Group, and its Cor­po­rate Lead­er­ship Award to the ANSA McAL Group, at its 29th an­nu­al “The Lega­cy Con­tin­ues” Schol­ar­ship Gala on April 17 in New York City.

The awards recog­nise in­di­vid­ual and cor­po­rate con­tri­bu­tions to eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment, ed­u­ca­tion and work­force ad­vance­ment across the Caribbean.

Dr Sab­ga has guid­ed the Trinidad and To­ba­go-based con­glom­er­ate’s ex­pan­sion through­out the Caribbean and the Unit­ed States. The ANSA McAL Group op­er­ates in man­u­fac­tur­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion, fi­nan­cial ser­vices, me­dia and re­al es­tate, main­tain­ing a pres­ence in the re­gion for over a cen­tu­ry.

AFUWI said the group’s re­gion­al foot­print re­flects The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ mis­sion to sup­port ed­u­ca­tion and hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment. Its op­er­a­tions span mul­ti­ple coun­tries served by the uni­ver­si­ty.

“Dr Sab­ga and the ANSA McAL Group ex­em­pli­fy the in­ter­sec­tion of lead­er­ship, en­ter­prise and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty,” said Cyrus Mc­Calla, chair­man of the AFUWI board. “Their in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion and hu­man de­vel­op­ment has cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for gen­er­a­tions.”

The group’s cor­po­rate phi­los­o­phy, “In­spir­ing Bet­ter Choic­es for a Bet­ter World”, un­der­lines its fo­cus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty, gov­er­nance and com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment, in­clud­ing sup­port for ed­u­ca­tion ini­tia­tives across the Caribbean.

Dr Sab­ga ac­cept­ed the award on be­half of the com­pa­ny’s em­ploy­ees.

“For over a cen­tu­ry, our group has grown along­side the re­gion—build­ing in­dus­tries, ex­pand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties and cre­at­ing last­ing val­ue,” he said, adding that the com­pa­ny would con­tin­ue to fo­cus on growth and re­silience.

The gala will bring to­geth­er lead­ers from busi­ness, acad­e­mia, health care and pub­lic ser­vice to raise funds for schol­ar­ships for Caribbean stu­dents fac­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

This year’s ef­fort co­in­cides with Ja­maica’s on­go­ing re­cov­ery from Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, which af­fect­ed more than 1.6 mil­lion peo­ple and dis­rupt­ed ed­u­ca­tion for thou­sands of stu­dents.