Miranda La Rose

Retired agricultural scientist Guyanese Dr Reginald Thompson has moved from research and the formal classroom to mentoring and guiding students to become the best version of themselves on weekends in the Durham Education Mentoring Programme (DEMP) in Ontario, Canada.

Sport physiotherapist Jana Edghill hopes to continue working on a plan to elevate and expand the standard of practice in her field in the public sector and is doing so along with a team of sport physiotherapists now based at the National Sports Clinic and other parties.

Bradford Allicock, the incumbent toshao of Fairview Village in the North Rupununi, has been involved with the Iwokrama River Lodge and the rainforest reserve from the inception.

After decades of producing a range of musicals, jazz shows, classical shows, drama, storytelling and other productions, achieving some 300 productions on stage and in television, and hosting international artistes and groups, Gem Madhoo-Nascimento, 70, is now focusing on educational theatre.

The book that topped the 2023 Guyana Prize for Literature Fiction award is the culmination of journalist and author Michael Jordan thinking for 47 years about writing the story of a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Ann Stewart, who was murdered in 1976, and whose body was placed in a sitting position in an alley in Tucville.

Historian Dr Estherine Adams, whose manuscript, “The Few Among the Many: Women’s Labour in British Guiana’s Jails”, won the Non-Fiction Award in the 2024 Guyana Prize for Literature, is continuing to research and write with the aim of bringing clarity to some of the narratives that form part of Guyana’s colonial history.

`Women human rights defenders, particularly, also face stigmatization through public statements intended to make their work seem illegitimate, and to foster a climate of hostility and intolerance among various sectors of society’ National human rights commissions hold the state accountable and should be robust, independent and autonomous, says Roberta Clarke, President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).

Retired civil engineer Agnes Dalrymple earned the title ‘Iron Lady’ for her no-nonsense approach to any lack of discipline in the predominantly male-dominated workforce she headed, and particularly in the sea defence area where she fought for funding to ensure the safety of people’s lives and infrastructure.  

Working for three years in the private sector made Nicholas Fraser, head of the Allied Arts Unit (AAU) in the Ministry of Education (MoE) realise how valuable his skills and expertise in education are to the nations’ teachers and children, and that this was where he got job satisfaction.

Medino Abraham did not make the grade to attend Santa Rosa Secondary in Santa Rosa Village, Moruca, Region One (Barima/Waini); he attended Santa Rosa Primary Top and completed the Secondary Schools Proficiency Examinations then written by students in the community high school system, but today the 45-year-old religious and social educator is the holder of two university degrees.

When Alex D’Aguiar left secondary school at 15 years old, he never imagined himself achieving his childhood ambition of becoming a veterinarian, much less a medical doctor because he had not written the necessary science subjects at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations.

After successfully captaining the national rugby football team, Guyana Jaguars aka The Green Machine, to a seven-year winning streak in the region from 2005, Claudius Butts, 39, the Guyana Rugby Football Union’s (GRFU) coach of the national sevens side says, he is helping to develop the young players to bring back respectability to Guyana’s rugby in the region.

Puerto Rican-American Janelle Mendez Viera is a survivor of military sexual violence and founder of the Military Sexual Trauma Movement.

Guyana-born Warrant Officer II of the Light Infantry Battalion, Glenrory Low, 46, joined the British Army in 2000 because he was looking for a challenging career, two decades later he least expected to be one of three warrant officers in the army called to serve at the coronation of King Charles III in May last year.

After more than 55 years in the regional and local education systems of which she has dedicated 25 years to Guyana, Jamaica-born Ursuline nun Sister Marie Harper, the first principal of Marian Academy, is now set to retire.

Debbie Joseph-Hopkinson, 53, interim director of the Institute for Human Resilience, Strategic Security and the Future, University of Guyana and president of the Guyana Association of Professional Social Workers (GAPSW) has slowly but surely climbed the academic and professional ladders by following due process.

From selling corilla bush for tea in England 25 years ago, founder of Dalgety Teas, Mark Dalgety, 57, now has 36 lines of herbal teas, some eight families of teas, all sold in cities in the United Kingdom, United States of America, Nigeria and in some Asian markets as he continues to expands his business globally.  

South Africa-based Guyanese telecommunications engineering specialist Mortimer Hope, 57, has represented his adopted homeland and the continent of Africa in his area of expertise at regional and international forums for more than three decades and is now engaged in a global project to connect the unconnected through the internet by placing unmanned aircraft in the stratosphere.

Allyson Gilford-Benn has been known to rely on faith. Years ago, she had quit her job as a banker to nurture her young children, rearing chickens and driving a minibus to make ends meet while doing so.

Rosamund Benn nee Gouveia was just 16 years old when she got married and according to her did not know “how to cook or keep house or how to do farm work”, nor was she equipped with any skills to earn a living.