Danielle Whar­wood

Like many teens dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, I spent long hours scrolling through so­cial me­dia, specif­i­cal­ly Tik­Tok. It was this plat­form, af­ter watch­ing a video about ma­rine garbage patch­es around the world, that fi­nal­ly made me un­der­stand the de­gree to which our wa­ters are pol­lut­ed. This sparked a new in­ter­est in me and led me down a rab­bit hole, re­search­ing, try­ing to un­der­stand the dam­age we hu­mans have in­flict­ed up­on our home, plan­et Earth, es­pe­cial­ly on our oceans, and the steps we are tak­ing to re­duce—if not erad­i­cate—the harm done.

I have al­ways viewed our oceans as vast, ma­jes­tic and mys­te­ri­ous ex­pans­es full of a va­ri­ety of unique species, and know­ing our deep blue seas and oceans are filled with piles of garbage and mi­croplas­tics left me un­set­tled. It was this dis­cov­ery that led to my great in­ter­est in Ge­og­ra­phy and Bi­ol­o­gy, which I would ex­plore at the Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) lev­el and led to meet­ing a teacher whom I very much re­spect­ed and held in high re­gard.

My Ge­og­ra­phy teacher, Ms Gan­ness, a for­mer teacher of Holy Faith Con­vent Cou­va (the sec­ondary school I at­tend), was a great in­spi­ra­tion to me and was tru­ly pas­sion­ate about Ge­og­ra­phy. Her en­thu­si­asm for ge­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na was con­ta­gious, deep­en­ing my ap­pre­ci­a­tion for and cu­rios­i­ty about the nat­ur­al world. Though I’ve al­ways ad­mired my teach­ers, as I’ve grown old­er, I’ve come to ad­mire them even more for their pa­tience, knowl­edge, and ded­i­ca­tion. Most of my teach­ers have, in fact, been women, and from a young age, I looked up to them as role mod­els. Their guid­ance, along with my own hard work, helped me suc­ceed in CSEC, and I hope to achieve sim­i­lar suc­cess with the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions (CAPE).

Grow­ing up in Trinidad, I was used to see­ing women in im­por­tant roles in many and var­ied fields. I feel priv­i­leged to see women and men in an equal light. It didn’t even oc­cur to me un­til I be­came old­er that there was a so­ci­etal bias against women, or that women were dis­ad­van­taged in so­ci­ety. This non-re­al­i­sa­tion was due to the per­se­ver­ance of past women fight­ing for us to reach this point. Even as I ap­proach adult­hood, I still find it hard to come to terms with the knowl­edge that for most of the past, and some­times even now, women weren’t seen as equal to men. At­tend­ing an all-girls school helped to form this world­view and strength­ened my be­lief in the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of women. I have seen first­hand the in­tel­li­gence, tal­ent, and de­ter­mi­na­tion my peers pos­sess. It ex­cites me to know that we will soon be shap­ing the fu­ture as de­ci­sion-mak­ers and pro­fes­sion­als.

That said, I strug­gle to wrap my head around the fact that mil­lions of young girls and women around the world lack ac­cess to ed­u­ca­tion. Many can­not even dream of pur­su­ing ca­reers, es­pe­cial­ly in STEM (Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing and Math), be­cause those op­por­tu­ni­ties are sim­ply out of reach. Ed­u­ca­tion opens count­less doors, yet we Trin­bag­on­ian girls of­ten take it for grant­ed. Here in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we have ini­tia­tives like the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme that pro­vides fi­nan­cial sup­port for ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion and in­sti­tu­tions like the MIC In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy that of­fer free tech­ni­cal train­ing. How­ev­er, in many places, sys­temic bar­ri­ers pre­vent women from ac­cess­ing even ba­sic school­ing.

As a young woman pas­sion­ate about the world and the sci­ence that ex­plains it, I recog­nise the im­por­tance of en­cour­ag­ing more girls to ex­plore STEM fields. Rep­re­sen­ta­tion mat­ters—see­ing women ex­cel in these ar­eas in­spires the next gen­er­a­tion to fol­low suit, and we must con­tin­ue to up­lift and sup­port women in sci­ence, en­sur­ing that no girl feels lim­it­ed by out­dat­ed no­tions of what she can or can­not achieve based on her gen­der.

To­day, the world faces many chal­lenges: cli­mate change, pol­lu­tion, de­for­esta­tion, poor waste man­age­ment, food in­se­cu­ri­ty, and the list on­ly grows. Sci­ence holds the key to solv­ing them. If we ex­clude half the pop­u­la­tion from the con­ver­sa­tion, from work­ing to­geth­er to find an­swers, we dra­mat­i­cal­ly lim­it our po­ten­tial for progress. As I pur­sue my own path (per­haps in Bi­ol­o­gy, En­vi­ron­men­tal Stud­ies, Ge­og­ra­phy, or even Ma­rine Bi­ol­o­gy, I have many choic­es and that Tik­Tok was on­ly the first of many to catch my in­ter­est), I hope to con­tribute to a fu­ture where more women are em­pow­ered to in­no­vate, lead, and make a last­ing im­pact.

Danielle Whar­wood danielle­whar­wood@gmail.com is a stu­dent at Holy Faith Con­vent, Cou­va

The fore­go­ing was a Week­ly col­umn by Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse NGO to equip read­ers to face the cli­mate and health cri­sis.