Sev­er­al promi­nent mem­bers of the Ma­yaro con­stituen­cy were recog­nised at a gala awards cer­e­mo­ny host­ed by Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray at the Ma­yaro Re­source Cen­tre last week.

The in­au­gur­al Ma­yaro Lega­cy Awards Cer­e­mo­ny cel­e­brat­ed the con­tri­bu­tions to lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment made by a who’s who list of lu­mi­nar­ies, all of whom grew up in the south-east­ern com­mu­ni­ty.

The cer­e­mo­ny ho­n­oured Austin ‘Jack’ Warn­er, Prof Brins­ley Sama­roo, Ken Ali, Matthew Pierre, Michael An­tho­ny, Sophia Karen Chote, Trevor Lynch, Dr William Dhanes­sar and Win­ston Dook­er­an, (ORTT).

Med­ical field ex­pert and na­tion­al award re­cip­i­ent Prof Dilip Dan de­liv­ered a fea­ture ad­dress at the event.

“I re­al­ly de­cid­ed to de­liv­er this ad­dress be­cause MP Paray asked me to speak to the young peo­ple of Ma­yaro and mo­ti­vate them to achieve their full po­ten­tial. I be­lieve that there are three fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples that con­tributed to suc­cess­es be­ing cel­e­brat­ed here to­day. These are a sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, a fo­cus on ed­u­ca­tion, and a com­mit­ment to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion. I urge every young per­son to take the op­por­tu­ni­ties giv­en, re­main pos­i­tive, and re­mem­ber that hard work and sac­ri­fice al­ways pay off,” Dan said.

“It was an ho­n­our to have been in­vit­ed to speak here this evening in the pres­ence of per­sons who achieved so many great things. I thank the ho­n­ourees for their con­tri­bu­tions to Trinidad and To­ba­go and I con­grat­u­late MP Paray and the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee for mak­ing the ef­fort to cel­e­brate these great achiev­ers and in­spire our fu­ture lead­ers.”

The evening was punc­tu­at­ed by mean­ing­ful re­flec­tions from the mas­ter of cer­e­monies Hans­ley Ajod­ha; greet­ings from Ray­mond Co­zi­er, chair­man of the Ma­yaro-Rio Claro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion; as well as mu­si­cal in­ter­ludes by sax­o­phon­ist Rinelle Har­ry­nar­ine and singers April Jairam and Tamu Aguiller­ra.

Paray, mean­while, said, “As an MP, I see my role as a shaper of thoughts, a leader to path­ways and a cre­ator of op­por­tu­ni­ties. A lega­cy is some­thing to be passed down through gen­er­a­tions and cher­ished, and the per­sons ho­n­oured here tonight have cre­at­ed lega­cies for us to trea­sure and build up­on. We must over­come the dis­en­chant­ment that young peo­ple face and rein­vig­o­rate the tra­di­tion of sto­ry­telling. These awardees have sto­ries of how they over­came great chal­lenges to ex­cel in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, and they are shin­ing ex­am­ples to in­spire the fu­ture lead­ers of Ma­yaro.”

There was no short­age of cel­e­bra­tion, as the au­gust as­sem­bly of award re­cip­i­ents re­lat­ed deeply per­son­al sto­ries about their path­ways to achieve­ment and shared poignant ad­vice to mo­ti­vate and in­spire the fu­ture Ma­yaro gen­er­a­tions.

Re­ceiv­ing a re­sound­ing round of ap­plause and clos­ing off the night was cel­e­brat­ed states­man and econ­o­mist Win­ston Dook­er­an

“I would first­ly like to thank and in­spire the per­sons who taught and in­spired us to achieve great­ness. We all grew up in small vil­lages in this com­mu­ni­ty and yet still, we ven­tured out in­to the wider world with a deep sense of con­fi­dence. I be­lieve that con­fi­dence emerged from what I con­sid­er to be a ‘mo­sa­ic of har­mo­ny’ that we ex­pe­ri­enced. It was this cul­ture of in­clu­sive­ness and deep-root­ed val­ues that gave birth to so many ex­am­ples of ex­cel­lence dis­played here tonight. I think that it was a de­sire to spread this essence of har­mo­ny that mo­ti­vat­ed my­self and so many oth­ers. This mo­sa­ic of har­mo­ny is a lega­cy that we need to re-in­stil in our so­ci­ety, and I ap­plaud MP Paray for his lead­er­ship in cre­at­ing this av­enue for it to grow and flour­ish,” Dook­er­an said.