Castries – Tuesday, September 10, 2013 – The Saint Lucia Air and Sea Ports Authority (SLASPA) awarded six deserving students with scholarships at an awards ceremony last week at SLASPA’s Headquarters Conference Room. These students are recipients of SLASPA’s yearly scholarships, which are awarded to high achievers who sat the Common Entrance Examination whose parents work at SLASPA. In addition, SLASPA recognised the achievements of two outgoing scholarship holders who successfully completed their CXC examinations and gained accepted into Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC). With their acceptance into SALCC, they also qualified for tertiary level scholarships.

Mr. Ben Emmanuel, Senior Director Corporate Services and Administration was the featured speaker and stated “We at SLASPA are delighted to provide scholarships to our employee’s children who do well at the Common Entrance and CXC exams. Normally, we handout five scholarships, but this year we were tasked with giving six as the results were exceptionally high. Everyone knows that the most important resource in any country is its people and what better way to develop a country’s greatest resource but by investing in the education of its youth. The employees, management and the Board of SLASPA share your parents’ joy in your achievement and the satisfaction you rightly feel in performing exceptionally at this year’s Common Entrance Examination. We wish all of you every success in your academic careers and we hope that our small contribution forms the basis on which you could grow and develop into bright young professionals”.

Outgoing secondary scholarship holder and incoming tertiary scholarship holder Keville Placide delivered an inspiring address to the incoming students saying “I take this opportunity on behalf of myself and other award recipients, to thank you SLASPA for your support and encouragement and for demonstrating year after year that you care about our education and the well-being of our future in general. We deeply appreciate your willingness to give back to society as you seek to build lives of young people, particularly in the area of education. You understand that the future of this nation of ours lies in the hands of the students of today”.

This year’s secondary scholarship awardees were Zaeda Jhoi Peter, Jasmin Stanislaus, Tyrese Alexander, Kyyle Regis, Daniella Edwin, Yhasha Satney, and tertiary award scholarships were Gabrielle Elie and Keville Placide.

Over sixty-five students have been awarded scholarships through SLASPA’s Scholarship Awards programme and gone on to academic and eventually career success. In order to maintain the scholarships, secondary school students must have an average of 70% and tertiary students must uphold a GPA of 3.0. The students’ performance is consistently monitored by SLASPA’s Employee Development and Training Unit throughout the 5 years, and assistance given when needed.

The development of the scholarship programme and active involvement of members of SLASPA’s management, demonstrates SLASPA’s dedication and commitment to the welfare of not only employees but to their children and by extension Saint Lucia.