Fear of the un­known is one fac­tor that might af­fect the re­la­tion­ship be­tween na­tion­als and refugees or sim­i­lar mi­grant groups. Ed­u­ca­tion is the best way to man­age this, says hu­man rights grad­u­ate Do­minique Ram­sawak.

As a re­sult she has been do­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes about refugees with schools and is now start­ing on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. As a Glob­al/In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies and Hu­man Rights grad­u­ate, Ram­sawak has been work­ing with refugees in T&T through Liv­ing Wa­ters since 2018 and that ex­pe­ri­ence has out­fit­ted her to the ex­tent that she hopes to be able to take her un­der­stand­ing on those is­sues to the world on T&T’s be­half.

Ram­sawak is among can­di­dates for this week­end’s T&T (Miss World) com­pe­ti­tion. She rep­re­sents St Au­gus­tine where she was born to a Trinida­di­an fa­ther and Dutch moth­er. She spent much of her child­hood be­tween the Nether­lands and T&T. Lo­cal­ly she was raised in the old­est ho­tel in the Caribbean, the his­tor­i­cal Pax Guest House.

A grad­u­ate of St Xavier’s Pri­vate School, St Joseph’s Con­vent, St Joseph, and Trin­i­ty Col­lege, USA, Ram­sawak holds a Bach­e­lor de­gree in In­ter­na­tion­al Stud­ies. While at school she was in­volved in or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing the Mod­el Unit­ed Na­tions, Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment As­so­ci­a­tion, Asian Amer­i­can Stu­dents As­so­ci­a­tion, Men of Col­or Al­liance, and the Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Af­fairs Coun­cil.

“I’ve had thriv­ing pas­sion for hu­man rights is­sues, hav­ing worked with refugees lo­cal­ly. I joined the Shel­ter Project team at the Min­istry for Mi­grants and Refugees, an in­no­v­a­tive flag­ship project seek­ing to ame­lio­rate the liv­ing con­di­tions of asy­lum seek­ers here. These po­si­tions placed me on the front-lines of the Venezue­lan refugee cri­sis in T&T, con­tin­u­al­ly ed­u­cat­ing me on the dy­nam­ics and im­pact of such a sit­u­a­tion,” she said

“From my ex­pe­ri­ence, I was made aware of how much more needs to be done to im­prove and man­age the refugee cri­sis. We look to our gov­ern­ments as the prob­lem-solvers in these sit­u­a­tions, but it’s a na­tion­al is­sue. As Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens we al­so have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to as­sist in im­prov­ing this cri­sis.

“Fear of the un­known pro­found­ly im­pacts our re­la­tion­ship with lo­cal refugees. I be­lieve that the best way to over­come these ten­sions is through ed­u­ca­tion, in­tend­ing to elim­i­nate gaps in the nar­ra­tive. Giv­en this, my plat­form is cen­tered on spread­ing aware­ness and a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the refugee sit­u­a­tion.”

To fur­ther her work in this sphere, Ram­sawak plans on con­tin­u­ing her ed­u­ca­tion—a Mas­ters de­gree in In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions—in the Nether­lands and is con­tin­u­ing her refugee aware­ness work.