 Hello and welcome to Issues and Answers, a production of the Government Information Service. I'm your host, Geraldine B. Set-Joseph. Nominations for the Order of St. Lucia are currently being accepted and with that being the case, I am joined here today by two members of the National Awards Committee to tell us a little bit more about the awards themselves and also the nomination process. So let me introduce Senator Marisha Thomas Francis, who is the chairperson of the committee and also Mrs. Irene St. Croix, who is the secretary of the National Awards Committee. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you very much. Now let's start off by getting a little bit of a brief history about the awards. Can you tell us something about the National Awards? Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today concerning the National Awards Committee. The National Awards Committee was launched on the 13th of November 2017. That's the official launch, you know. But of course, as St. Lucia's might be aware, a Society of Honor was established under the Constitution for the purpose of recognition of persons who have gone over and above the call of duty to, you know, conduct acts of bravery and acts of meritorious service to the community. And that act recognizes persons in a very significant way in that in February of every year, during independence, persons who qualify and who have been nominated successfully for an award gets to visit government house to receive the award under the patronage of the Governor-General. The order consists of the sovereign, the Governor-General as chancellor, and the living holders of awards in the following categories. And of course, my colleague here is going to give you a lot more detail concerning the composition of the awards. But we're talking about Knight or Dame, Grand Cross of the Order of St. Lucia. The second one is the Knight or Dame Commander of the Order of St. Lucia. We have the St. Lucia Cross, the Medal of Honor, Medal of Merit. We have Lipitor Medal, National Service Cross, and National Service Medal. Like I said, Mrs. Senkwa will give a lot more detail about the composition of the awards and how persons can qualify for those various awards. So our role, therefore, as committee members is to ensure that we sensitize the general public as to the need for them to nominate persons who are worthy of those awards. Over the years, we have recognized, the committee has recognized several persons who have gone over and above the call of duty. And we have many of them who are still living in St. Lucia, and some of them have actually passed. But of course, under the award, we are also able to recognize persons posthumously, and there are a number of St. Lucia's who have been recognized posthumously. So this is part of a sensitization program that we are doing. We did the lunch, as I mentioned. We have plans for going around the community, using various channels to ensure that we sensitize and motivate people to nominate worthy St. Lucia's. As we all know, there are a lot of unsung heroes among our maids. So we want people to recognize them. What does recognition do? Recognition of persons who have gone over and above the call of duty to serve our country. It motivates others. It inspires others. It actually encourages those awardees to continue to do good work in the community. So we are hoping that through our PR thrust, which is going to run until about the 11th of December, that thrust we are hoping will encourage persons to nominate a lot more persons than we have done in the past. Now you said that Ms. St. Qua was going to talk about more about the criteria and such that. So can you give us a little bit information about the criteria for people who are nominated? What is it that people have to look for in the person they put it, the name they put in forward? Let me just say good morning again. Thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to speak with you on your program. We are concerned mainly our committee with four areas of the awards, the Censure Cross, the Censure Medal of Honor, the Censure Medal of Merit and the Censure Lipito Medal. With the Censure Cross, you have the gold class and it is a person who has rendered distinguished and outstanding service of national importance to Censure. With the Censure Medal of Honor, we have the gold and the silver categories, a person who has rendered eminent service of national importance to Censure, or persons who have for acts of conspicuous courage in circumstance of extreme pairing. With the Censure Medal of Merit, we have the Golden Silver as well, a person who has performed long and meritorious service in the arts, literature, science, or other such fields in Censure. And for the Lipito Medal, we have three categories in this in this instance, the gold, the silver and the bronze, and it's for persons who have performed long and meritorious services to Censure, tending to promote a loyal public service, national welfare, or to inculcate and strengthen community spirit. So with those various awards, we are hoping to encourage many solutions to nominate as many people as you can, persons who have gone above and beyond. And as our chairperson indicated, we do have persons in the community who have not been recognized. They have gone above and beyond, but for some reason, because they are not aware, or perhaps because they don't know how to go about it. So our role is to sensitize, encourage, mobilize, and have persons coming out and getting, not just for getting awards, but awards of a high standard. With not one person, just two nominated persons who probably think have done maybe something very small and then they want to come out, but basically, significant, you know, contribution to the to Censure. And our deadline for nominations, we are sent out over 500 nomination forms. With the nomination forms, we have sent out letters as well, informing persons of how to go about it, and to indicate the address to which nomination should be submitted. All nominations should be submitted to the Secretary, National Awards Committee, care of Officer the Prime Minister, Graham Museum Administrative Building, Waterfront Castries, telephone numbers 468 to 142, or 468 to 103. Persons can call and for clarification if they need to. We also have the forms on our websites, and we have websites for on governor general.govt.lc, slash honors, and recognition.govt.lc. We have sent out nomination forms to our admissions overseas. We have at the post offices at the various sublets of Accountant Generals Department. We have at the libraries, and we have already begun receiving nominations, which is really good. Okay. So basically, as you were saying that there's so many, there's a lot of different avenues people actually go to to start the nomination process. That's right. And the process itself is not a complicated one, no? It's not complicated. Okay. In fact, once the the nomination form is very clear, and we encourage persons not just to put a CV, curriculum vitae, because that would significantly give you information about someone's life. But we want justification. Why do you think that this person marries consideration for an award and the kind of award that a person marries consideration for? So we do not want just the CV with the form, but to justify the reason you are nominating the person. Okay, cool. Now, one of the things as well that were mentioned, the senator mentioned that there was a press launch a couple of weeks ago. And within that press launch, it was said that you guys really wanted to underline the fact that anybody can be nominated. Okay. So can you just elaborate on that for us, please? When we say anybody can be nominated, I believe there is a perception in St. Lucia and perception based on historical fact that people believe that it's only a certain category of persons that are worthy of nomination. They are people in the various communities. We're talking about farmers, we're talking about fishermen, we're talking about a lot of young people who go about doing extraordinary things that merit recognition. But because of that perception over the years, certain people who should have been nominated have not been. So we are telling St. Lucia that nominations are open to anybody in the communities, whether we're talking about people who cannot even illiterate people who can even read and write. The idea is to recognize them for the good work that they have done. And we know that there are certain people who may want to nominate, but they perhaps cannot write, fill out the nomination form properly. There are persons in the community that they can go to seek help or they can call any of our committee members, especially our secretary, to find out how it is they can go about filling out the nomination form to ensure that they give the right information for giving due recognition to the persons out there. I just want to use that opportunity to say that we all live in St. Lucia and we know that we have a lot of social ills. Economically, things are rough. You only have to listen to some of the talk shows and you will hear people actually, you know, spewing venom, if you like, in terms of what they feel every day, what their neighbors feel every day, what their children feel every day. And we believe that we need to balance that with some good news, good news that will inspire, like I said before, good news that will encourage, good news that will motivate people into action to do the right thing. I mean, when you wake up in the morning, if you hear some good news around what good work somebody did in a community, to me that is a good way to start to balance off, you know, the bad feelings that we feel. In terms of our young people, you know, our young people are facing a lot of social issues. I mean, every day we hear this one, this crime happening in this community and it involves a lot of our young people. What can we do as a community to ensure that we inspire the young people such that they can think positively and, you know, get motivated to do the right thing? I believe the award gives us an excellent opportunity to reward the young people who do good stuff. We have a number of them who do very, very good work and, you know, we need to encourage them and we need to motivate others to do the same thing. Okay, well thank you. On that note, we're just going to take a quick break and then we'll come back and hear some more about the next award. Thank you. We'll be back right back after this quick break. Thank you. My 13-year-old child, she's driving me crazy. I just don't know what to do. All that I need is some good leaks to wake up. Alice, ignore the counseling pension is given. Government employees have free access to professional counseling services under the Employee Assistance Program, known as EAP. EAP? EAP? What's that? Not me that telling people my business. Listen to me, Alice. I was struggling with my child. I made an appointment to see an EAP counselor and I was very satisfied with the service that I received. And you know what? Up to a day like today, my information remains confidential. Cox, how come nobody in the office knew anything about your counseling? Ah, that's because EAP counselors, they work on the strict clauses of confidentiality. I know you know what confidential means. EAP providing professional counseling services? How much is it? Girl, the counseling is free. Free for you, free for your child. And you know what? Your information remains confidential. Call the EAP unit at the ministry of the public service. Telephone number 468-2269 for more information. EAP Works, let it work for you. Welcome back to Issues and Answers. I am Jolene Beesett-Joseph and I'm joined today by committee members of the National Awards Committee. And they're telling me a little bit about the process of nominating people for the awards and also a little bit about the awards themselves. Now, Senator, you were telling me about the importance of why you believe that the awards are necessary in regards to, you know, getting people motivated and inspiring people to do, you know, especially young people, other things in society to, you know, to most probably be recognized in this way. Can you elaborate a little bit more on that for me? I mean, how do you think things are right now? How necessary do you really think this is? Especially at a time like now in society? Yes. Before I answer specifically, I just want to quote Mother Teresa, there is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread. And if we're talking about the private sector, if we're talking about from a human resource perspective, Dane College said, and I quote, people work for money but go the extra mile for praise, recognition, and rewards. So whether we are talking about public sector, we are talking about private sector, we are talking about home management, we are talking about, you know, human resource management in the workplace, people do feel motivated, people do feel motivated, they do feel encouraged, they do feel inspired when someone, whether you're talking about the family, you're talking about your business manager in the workplace, people feel that way when they are rewarded, they are recognized for the good that they do. And we're talking about in St. Lucia, I was speaking about some of the social ills that we have now. Economically, you know, some people are feeling the pressure and I believe that when you reward unrecognized persons who have gone over and above the call of duty to serve, to serve humankind, to serve the country, to serve each other, to make a difference, a discernible difference in the society, I believe it goes a long way in making them feel better, it goes a long way in inspire others to want to do the right thing. And like I said earlier, provides that kind of balance against bad news because a lot of the time we wake up and throughout the day we are hearing all the ills that are in society as opposed to some good news story. So I believe more of that good news story will encourage others to do the right thing and to do work that is worthy of recognition in the society. In terms of promoting the program, we are embarking on a number of PR activities. We are going to be you know presenting on some of the talk shows last week, Thursday, two of our committee members in the presence of our deputy chair and PR head, Mr. King, but King, as well as Madam Secretary, they were on Mr. Chairman and did a fantastic job in actually sensitizing the general public. We're going to take that a step further. This week we are here, we want to go to Roachry Club to sort of sensitize as well. Some of the members are going to the other communities to have town hall meetings, town hall meetings in Viewfort and of course, Madam Secretary will talk a little bit more about that. But the idea is between now and the 11th of December first to go around the island to do our PR activity so that we can sensitize people to send in those nominations. I want to take this opportunity to thank persons who have actually submitted nomination forms. We've received some so far that we are actually reviewing, but we are encouraging persons to send more of them for us by the 11th so that we can have a huge pool to choose from so we could have that good news story happening in February of 2018. Okay, one of the things I wanted to ask, because as you said, you want more people to send in nominations. Suppose I, as an individual, know two people that I think are worthy of being nominated. Is that, can I make more than one nomination, for example? Absolutely, you can nominate as many as possible the modern area. The modern area. I think it's opportune before I hand over to my secretary here to say that I am fortunate in that I am serving alongside some illustrious team members, team members who are committed to the cause and who are working very hard to ensure that we are successful in this particular thrust. A while ago I mentioned Mr Wilbert King, he's the deputy chair and also the PR lead. We have the commissioner of police. We also have Mr Gregory Sanju out of Viewfort. Mrs Orisha Denbo Bullen who is the chair of the Viewfort Council. Yeah, Viewfort Town Council. Mr Leslie Mondezi who has been nominated by the leader of the opposition to serve. And of course we have madam secretary here who's doing a phenomenal job in ensuring that she supports the team and making all this happen. She has to take a lot of credit for organizing all this PR activity for us and not to forget Nicole McDonnell because she's a pillar in ensuring that we are able to do it right and open the doors for the PR to happen in a professional way and in an effective way. So thanks, Nicole. Very good. Now I'm saying, if I can hand over to you because the time is running on us very fast. So is there anything you'd like to add before time runs out on us that we need to know about the national awards? Okay, just to add to what madam chairperson just said we are not looking at any, there's no need for class or credo or race or color. Every and anyone can be nominated. We would not like to know that Paul nominates Peter and Peter nominates Paul. Right. At the same time, persons should not inform persons that they are nominating them. Okay. You know you want the element in a degree of surprise. When we were on the show last week, this day we were very happy when Mr. Dave Summers said that he got an award and he was so surprised and he actually explained how he felt and that is what we want people to feel that elation when you get out of not knowing that somebody coins you know I'm nominating me for an award trying all the information you can give and then they go giving all the information or whatever it is that they want to ensure they give so that they can get the award and at the end of the day they don't get the award and it's going to be disappointing. So you want to maintain the element of surprise. We want the standard to be lifted. We want persons who are recommended are deserving of the recommendation. In addition to that, we want to meet our youth as much as possible and we know the youth they use their social media would be Facebook and what's happened so on. So with the help of Ms. McDonald and I must say she has really been supportive and assisted us tremendously in getting the PR drive together even the launch as well. So we want to thank her for that. She would be assisting us in getting the wider public and the youth involved in the process. We want full participation. In addition to that, I meant to say that we can also persons can also email irin.senkwa.gov.lc email the forms. The forms are online. You can fill computer forms and email them as well with the necessary documentation. We want to with the town hall meetings that we have planned, we wanted to meet the whole community throughout the length from Befoss and Wichita. So we have our our member who is down south, Ms. Bolin, and she would be looking at town town hall meetings down south and we're going to be looking at some town hall meetings in the north. We have the rotary as chairperson indicated and Mr. King and Mr. Mendesi would be going around in the town hall meetings. We really believe that it is it is national pride to receive an award whether you receive the gold, the silver or the bronze because sometimes you find people are saying that you know why the bronze or the silver but it is just a privilege to be honored to receive an award and every single submission receive such an award should be happy and should be proud. And we really want the young people to know it's not just for the older folks, it's also for them. There are young people who have gone above and beyond the call of duty and we want to recognize them and we hope that persons who have recognized them will submit nominations for them. Excellent. Well I'm sorry to say time has actually run out on us. However I want to thank you, thank you for coming in and you know talking to us about the national awards. So again thank you to the senator and also to Mrs. Irene Senkwa and thank you also for joining us however here at GIS we're asking you to stay tuned to the national television network. Bye bye for now. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Thank you.