The Day Mohan Found His Confidence by Anaya Lee Willabus

May 2015 bring you new hopes, new aspirations and a whole new beginning!

Sukree Boodram left Guyana as a teenager in 1983 for a better opportunity in the US.  Four years later she was married to the person who would become her abuser for 21 years.  Born into a Hindu family and raised to keep her personal problems to herself, Sukree never sought any help nor did she stand up to her abusive husband. A wife and mother of two, who strongly embraced her cultural and traditional beliefs,…

“A dream is a wish that your heart makes” and 9 year old Sapphire Autumn Rose is following her dream and sharing her heart with the world!   The pint-size entrepreneur recently launched her “Heart Full of Dreams” collection via her online retail store dobviousrose.com. The pink and rose color infused collection includes beautiful fashion necklaces, bracelets, scarfs, dream pillows, T-shirts, blankets, and charms for young girls. The daughter of Guyanese designers, Michelle Cole and the late…

Zorena Jagnandan, who is Guyanese, and her staff offer many different medical and nonmedical services — wound care, occupational and physical therapy, nursing care, post-surgical care, speech therapy, medical social worker, shopping and errands, cooking and meal planning, help for new and expectant parents, light cleaning, help with paperwork, assistance to outside medical appointments, laundry, help with bathing and companionship. Jagnandan’s background in nursing and her experience in different nursing settings is what helped her…

Future Scientist, Stony Brook University Class of 2013 Majors: Chemistry; Chemical & Molecular Engineering UNCF-Merck Science Initiative 2012 Award Recipient Dara Bobb-Semple has many accomplishments at Stony Brook – from twice being recognized for achieving a 4.0 GPA, to receiving the MARC award in fall 2011, to being elected to Tau Beta Pi Honor Society (December 2011), to recently being named a recipient of a national award, the 2012 UNCF Merck Undergraduate Science Fellowship! But…

Fifteen year old Table Tennis Star, Chelsea Edghill, was introduced to the sport at the tender age of 9, and she has served up quite an impressive career record. The Bishop’s High School student first got her start at the Teach Them Young training Summer Camp and later at Mae’s where she regularly competed for the school. In 2006,  Edghill made her first regional appearance at the inaugural tournament of the annual Caribbean Pre-Cadet Table…

Author Jan Lowe Shinebourne is a Guyanese novelist who was born in Canje, Berbice, Guyana and was educated at Berbice High School and the University of Guyana. After school she was a reporter in Georgetown. She began writing in the mid-1960s and in 1974 she was a prize-winner in the National History and Arts Council Literary Competition. In 1970 she emigrated to London, England. She did postgraduate literary studies at the University of London. She…

Oslene Carrington is the CEO of the Guyana Economic Development Trust,  an independent philanthropic organization that incubates and supports projects that develop the workforce and boost the private sector of Guyana.  The US-based philanthropic organization has partnered with the School of Entrepreneurship and Business Innovation (SEBI) of the University of Guyana (UG) to provide funding for an annual Guyana Innovation Prize of $10,000 to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. The award provides pre-seed funding to commercially…

Helen Taitt was the founder and director of the School of Guyana Ballet, which trained many of the teachers with the Guyana National School of Dance. Her dancing career spanned two decades from the 1950s to 1970s. Helen made the theatre her life-long career, performing, composing and teaching right up to the end of her life. She was Guyana’s best known, most accomplished and acclaimed professional dancer, and was also a choreographer, writer, dance instructor,…

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett was born in the Amerindian Village of Santa Rosa, Guyana. She received her early education in Santa Rosa and then move to the capital Georgetown to attend a private school.  Minister Rodrigues-Birkett then left Guyana for Saskatchewan, Canada, on scholarship, to pursue studies in Business Administration and Indian Studies. Following her return to Guyana in 1993, she read successfully for a degree in Social Work at the University of Guyana, while simultaneously managing…

Winnie Cox lives a privileged life of dances and dresses on her father’s sugar cane plantation. Life is sweet in the kingdom of sugar and Winnie along with her sister Johanna, have neither worries nor responsibilities, they are birds of paradise, protected from the poverty in the world around them. But everything can change in a heartbeat….When Winnie falls in love with George Quint, the post-office boy, a ‘darkie’ from the other side, she soon finds herself…

Ms. Valerie Rodway (1919-1970) was a teacher and Guyanese composer.  She is best known for her national songs, which include, “O Beautiful Guyana,” “Kanaïma,” “Hymn for Guyana’s Children,” “Arise, Guyana,” and “Guyana the Free.  She also put to music the famed Guyanese independence poem by Martin Carter, “Let Freedom Awaken.” Ms. Rodway was a member of one of those families whose contributions to Guyana are still evident. Her father, Newton Berthier Fraser was born in…

Margaux Rusita (Margaux Wong) is a fashion and textile designer originally from Guyana, South America. She was first introduced to textile design while in Secondary school but was introduced to the sewing machine as a young child. For the past ten years, Margaux has worked as a freelance designer. She was in 2007, employed as the Personal Assistant to the late Catherine Walker, who for many years designed countless special pieces for the late Princess…

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing (1 Thessalonians 5:11).  This five young women definitely epitomize this phrase. Meet Trea, Michelle, Sonya, Corlecia and Feigel who reign from the small town of Amelia Ward Linden in Guyana, and playfully call themselves the “Amelia’s Ward USCians.” These “beauties with brains” all attended the University of Southern Caribbean (USC) in Trinidad; an affiliate of Andrews University in Michigan and over the years have form a…

 It was out of the need to connect with Guyanese who were interested in seeing films by Guyanese and Caribbean filmmakers that the Timehri Film Festival was born three years ago, according to Romola Lucas, one of its founders. And while the business community and the government And while the business community and the government have not fully bought in to the festival financially, Lucas is heartened by the response at the community level, in…