T&T as­tronomer Dr Shirin Haque has been named as one of four An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards for Ex­cel­lence Lau­re­ates.

The oth­ers are Jal­lim Eu­dovic, a sculp­tor, of St Lu­cia, An­drew Mendes, an en­er­gy ser­vices en­tre­pre­neur, of Guyana and Ja­maican com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist Dr Olivene Burke.

The An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Caribbean Awards is the on­ly pro­gramme in the re­gion which seeks out and re­wards out­stand­ing nom­i­nees in Arts & Let­ters, Pub­lic & Civic Con­tri­bu­tions, Sci­ence & Tech­nol­o­gy and En­tre­pre­neur­ship. It has been in ex­is­tence since 2005 and has named, in­clu­sive of the cur­rent in­ductees, 43 Lau­re­ates from through­out the re­gion.

Dr Haque, a se­nior lec­tur­er, for­mer deputy dean and for­mer head of the De­part­ment of Physics, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine is the first and on­ly woman to head the de­part­ment to date. In 2018 she al­so be­came the first woman to be award­ed the pres­ti­gious Cari­com Sci­ence Award.

An in­spir­ing teacher and re­searcher in the cut­ting-edge field of as­tro­bi­ol­o­gy, she has pi­o­neered work on the Pitch Lake at La Brea and the mud vol­ca­noes in Trinidad that is recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. She was fea­tured on BBC’s Sci­ence in Ac­tion pro­gramme in 2008 for her work in As­tro­bi­ol­o­gy at the Pitch Lake. She col­lab­o­rates with as­tro­bi­ol­o­gists in Fin­land, Ger­many and the USA.

She start­ed an ob­ser­va­tion­al as­tron­o­my pro­gramme at St Au­gus­tine, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Turku in Fin­land, and its suc­cess has brought more in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion to UWI with the con­tri­bu­tion of da­ta to the mon­i­tor­ing of a mon­strous bi­na­ry black hole sys­tem and the first comet lan­der mis­sion.

Jal­lim Eu­dovic’s work, wood, bronze and mar­ble sculp­tures, are root­ed in Saint Lu­cian/Caribbean cul­ture but en­joys in­ter­na­tion­al ap­peal. He has been in­vit­ed to var­i­ous parts of the world, in­clud­ing Chi­na, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da, Africa, Mar­tinique and has been en­trust­ed with the work of cre­at­ing sculp­tures for pub­lic spaces in sev­er­al Chi­nese cities where he has erect­ed sev­en mon­u­men­tal sculp­tures to date.

Some of his more re­cent works in­clude a gov­ern­ment-com­mis­sioned pub­lic mon­u­ment for the Cas­tries wa­ter­front in St Lu­cia en­ti­tled “All In” to com­mem­o­rate the is­land’s in­de­pen­dence. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he has ex­hib­it­ed at the Afro Fu­ture Art Ex­hi­bi­tion (Mi­a­mi, 2019), the Zari Gallery (Lon­don, 2016), at Car­ifes­ta, Suri­name (2013), the Stephen Lawrence Cen­tre in Lon­don (2016), the 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeck­el (New York, 2017) and in var­i­ous group shows in France and Mar­tinique. One of his most con­sis­tent for­eign ports of call is Chi­na, where he has been in­vit­ed to cre­ate pub­lic works for the cities of Zhengzhou, Changchun and Fuzhou since 2008.

An­drew Mendes is the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Far­fan and Mendes Ltd (FML) a fam­i­ly busi­ness in Guyana. When he joined it in 1992, it was a small con­cern, em­ploy­ing less than 20 peo­ple and known main­ly for sell­ing chain­saws to the tim­ber com­pa­nies, with an an­nu­al turnover of G$78 mil­lion. To­day, be­cause of his lead­er­ship, FML has busi­ness in­ter­ests in not on­ly forestry, but al­so in the min­ing, agri­cul­tur­al, and oil and gas sec­tors, and em­ploys more than 370 peo­ple with an an­nu­al turnover above G$5 bil­lion.

FML com­petes lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly with the Far­fan & Mendes Group now com­pris­ing Mines Ser­vices Suri­name NV and two new ven­tures: Jaguar Oil­field Ser­vices and Pan­thera So­lu­tions. Both have been built through smart part­ner­ships with es­tab­lished glob­al com­pa­nies giv­ing FML a strong foothold in the emerg­ing oil and gas sec­tor. This led to Pan­thera So­lu­tions Inc be­ing the first Guyanese com­pa­ny to de­vel­op the ca­pac­i­ty and work on the new­ly ar­rived Liza Des­tiny FP­SO with­in two years of its in­cor­po­ra­tion.

Dr Olivene Burke, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Mona So­cial Ser­vice (MSS) or­gan­i­sa­tion for the last decade, is re­spon­si­ble for ex­e­cut­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s vi­sion of strength­en­ing un­der-de­vel­oped com­mu­ni­ties via a six-pil­lar so­cial in­ter­ven­tion mod­el com­pris­ing ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing, health, sports, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, crime and vi­o­lence re­duc­tion and peace. She is a leader in the uni­ver­si­ty’s “gown meets town” ini­tia­tive to make in­ter­ven­tions in its com­mu­ni­ties.

MSS was es­tab­lished in 2008 and un­der Dr Burke’s lead­er­ship has trans­formed the lives and liveli­hoods of over 40,000 res­i­dents in 16 Ja­maican in­ner-city com­mu­ni­ties—in­clud­ing Au­gust Town in St An­drew and Salt Spring in Mon­tego Bay. These com­mu­ni­ties are among the most volatile in Ja­maica and the Caribbean.

Young peo­ple from six of the com­mu­ni­ties have re­ceived MSS’s UWI Town­ship ter­tiary schol­ar­ship, and 33 have grad­u­at­ed thus far.

MSS’s in­ter­ven­tions are at every lev­el of the com­mu­ni­ties they serve: school, homes, recre­ation, and com­merce. Through its ac­tiv­i­ties, sev­er­al ba­sic and pri­ma­ry schools have been out­fit­ted with re­frig­er­a­tors, stoves, prop­er ven­ti­la­tion and safe­ty pro­vi­sions, elec­tri­cal sys­tem up­grades, and teacher train­ing pro­vi­sions.

Stu­dents were pro­vid­ed with meals and lap­top com­put­ers while kitchen gar­dens were ini­ti­at­ed to pro­vide means of self-suf­fi­cien­cy.