Sama­ki Fe­li­cian

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Miss World T&T, An­na-Lise Nan­ton, has dived deep in­to her Beau­ty With a Pur­pose project, choos­ing to teach the life­sav­ing skill of swim­ming to chil­dren across the na­tion.

Nan­ton, who was crowned Miss World T&T on June 23, launched her project, The Rip­ple Ef­fect, on Wednes­day evening at U-Pick Farm in Ch­aguara­mas.

She said the project aims to bring sus­tain­abil­i­ty through sport and har­ness its pow­er for so­cial em­pow­er­ment, well-be­ing, com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship.

Ex­plain­ing her rea­son for fo­cus­ing on a swim­ming pro­gramme for chil­dren, she said, “I know many of us in this room can name off-hand many peo­ple we know who don’t know how to swim or maybe have lost loved ones to drown­ing. That is a sta­tis­tic that needs to change.”

Nan­ton said her project will al­so in­clude up­grad­ing sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties to use more green tech­niques, thus re­duc­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal im­pact. The next ob­jec­tive, she said, is col­lab­o­rat­ing with Wiz­dom­CRM to cre­ate an in­no­v­a­tive way of ed­u­cat­ing young minds.

“We will merge sport sus­tain­abil­i­ty with Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) and Hu­man In­tel­li­gence to ed­u­cate chil­dren across the na­tion. Imag­ine a per­son­al AI tu­tor, de­signed with my knowl­edge and with one thou­sand times the ca­pac­i­ty, able to guide stu­dents 24/7 any­where in the coun­try or even in the world,” she ex­plained.

“This AI will teach chil­dren to make eco-friend­ly choic­es and ed­u­cate them on health and well­ness while pro­vid­ing them with the fun­da­men­tals of sport, all while em­pow­er­ing chil­dren to cre­ate their own rip­ple of change.”

Nan­ton said her love for sport and par­tic­i­pa­tion as a child was a guid­ing prin­ci­ple for her project choice.

“For those who don’t know me, sport is a huge part of my life from foot­ball to hik­ing to track and field to rug­by, name a sport, I prob­a­bly played it,” she said.

She said sport taught her how to work hard and played an in­te­gral part in who she is to­day. The 26-year-old said sport gave her a space where she be­longs, to be her­self, taught her con­fi­dence and how to over­come fail­ure.