Local unsung heroes honoured by FirstCaribbean

This afternoon, FirstCaribbean International Bank announced the names of this year’s National Unsung Heroes during brief ceremonies at their Albert Street headquarters in Belize City. They are Gloria Edwards and Sebastian Cayetano. Edwards served as an educator for forty-one years. During her tenure, she rose to the post of principal of Grace Chapel Primary School and played an integral role in developing that institution’s consistently successful musical programme. Since retirement in 2000, Edwards has made it her mission to bring music to the children of rural communities, using her own meagre pension to finance the initiative. Even at seventy years old, she travels daily to the villages, mostly in the Belize District. Today’s second honouree, Sebastian Cayetano, has worked for more than thirty-seven years to promote and preserve the Garifuna and Kekchi Maya culture. Using his own resources, in 1999 Cayetano opened Belize’s first Garifuna museum in Belize City. A school teacher all of his adult life, since retiring in 2004, the fifty-seven year old continues to dedicate time and effort to collecting artefacts and educating visitors about Belizean history. In addition to receiving gifts and a plaque, each honouree was awarded with a cheque for five thousand U.S. dollars to continue their work.

Gloria Edwards, National Unsung Hero
?I don?t fit the category, I don?t see myself in the place of being a hero, I?m just an ordinary person doing what needs to be done. There was something to be done, something that I that have real strong feelings about, I have always been concerned about the lack of equal opportunity and resources available to the rural communities.?

Sebastian Cayetano, National Unsung Hero
?We need to expand the museum, we need to improve on it and finally get it painted. I always feel kind of embarrassed when people ask, how is the museum, what colour is it? Well, it?s not yet painted…we?ll get there some day. So we will get there this time.?

Stephen Duncan, Country Mgr., FirstCaribbean Intl. Bank
?Unsung Hero is all about trying to highlight and bring to the fore the good that people do. They are generally, as you see from the finalists here today, they are about generally about selflessness and helping others rather than just being caught up with ourselves. And as I said in my speech earlier, this is particularly noble at this time when we see so much activity, so much news items about people being greedy and selfish and thinking only about themselves and not about the wider community.?

Both Edwards and Cayetano will now enter a regional pool of candidates from which the Caribbean Unsung Hero will be chosen. First prize is an additional seven thousand five hundred dollars, while two runners-up will receive another five thousand U.S. dollars to fund their projects. Since the Unsung Hero programme was established three years ago, Belize has won the regional prize twice, in 2003 by Youth Enhancement Services’ Florence Dillett and last year by Nurse Nancy Juan. Regional winners will be announced in November.