Ten-year-old cops Condé Nasté Essay Contest Award

TEN-YEAR-old Shandida Greida Gibbs of St. Eustatius emerged the winner of the Condé Nasté Traveler My Caribbean Essay Contest. The announcement was made by editor-in-chief of Condé Nasté Traveler, Klara Glowczewska at an award ceremony recently at the Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO) Conference in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.

Glowczewska also announced the two runners-up: Nordisia Lake of Anguilla and Tamika Jude of Dominica. This contest, now in its 13th year, is the first of its kind opened to Caribbean school children, and forms part of a tourism awareness programme for school children between the ages of 8 and 12.

Grade school children of the 32 CTO member countries were asked to submit a 250 word essay on the topic following topic: "If you were given the responsibility of preserving your island's environment and maintaining its beauty, how would you do that, and how would you involve your whole community from children to adults?"

Gibbs wrote: "Preserving the environment and maintaining the beauty of one's island calls for hard work and dedication. I am only ten years old, so you can imagine I will need a great deal of help from the support of my teachers and fellow students to start an anti-litter campaign. I will start a recycling project with my friends. We would have fun collecting bottles, cans, paper, plastic, and removing them from our environment in a creative way. My taking responsibility for the environment on my tranquil and charming island would be a task I would carry out with lots of pride and joy."

The contest, sponsored by Condé Nasté Traveler, the Caribbean Tourism Organisation, and American Airlines, educates elementary school children in the Caribbean islands about the importance of tourism to their country's economy.

There were 23 finalists in this year's competition.

Grand prize winner Gibbs, received a US$2,000 (J$124,000) scholarship and the two runners-up each received a US$500 (J$31,000) scholarship.

Gibbs' winning essay will also be featured in the December 2005 issue of Condé Nasté Traveler.

This year's 23 finalists in alphabetical order by country are:

Anguilla, Nordisia Lake.

Antigua and Barbuda, Samuel Nurse.

Aruba, Gloria Franken.

Bahamas, Danielle Roberts.

Barbados, Gabrielle Farley.

Belize, Kristin Marin.

Bermuda, Zoe Friesen.

British Virgin Islands, Jodi Samuel.

Cayman Islands, Clare-Louise McGrath.

Dominica, Tamika Jude.

Grenada, Shadina Simon.

Guyana, Angela Singh.

Jamaica, Shanice Hinds.

Montserrat, Karishma Dhera.

Nevis, Uta Trish Taylor.

St. Kitts, Davon Richardson.

St. Maarten, Terequé Leblanc.

St. Vincent & the Grenadines, Vakeesha John.

St. Eustatius, Shandida Greida Gibbs.

Suriname, Raies J. Wolfram.

Trinidad & Tobago, Rhonda Bobb.

Turks and Caicos, Carolyn Martinez.

U.S. Virgin Islands, Dionna Hopkins.