Tavo Sargent, aged 26, St Kitts
Every day I awake at 6:30 am and thank the Lord for blessing me to see yet another day. Being a person who values time I prepare myself and make my best effort to get to work on time at 8:00 am.
As a customs system technician my day is encompassed around solving and maintaining the computer system and cargo management system. Throughout the day I interact with my colleagues trying to learn as much as possible about the functions and roles of the department whether or not directly concerned with my particular section or department. I meet many interesting person and encounter some challenging and some not so challenging situations. My day does not end at the close of the work 4:00 pm.
As a youth volunteer, Regional Youth Caucus Representative to the Commonwealth Youth programme-Caribbean Center, Scout leader, basketball team manager, and Undergraduate student (online). I usually have lots to occupy my time between the time I leave work and retire for the night.
From assisting the youth department with any running projects, doing sensitization about the Commonwealth Youth Programme, developing young Cub-Scouts & Scouts, to training and managing a basketball club, I try to make a difference in my community and by extension my country. My day usually comes to close at around 12 midnight but not before I devote in a few hours to studying and doing assignments in pursuit of my Bachelors Degree in Network & Communication Management through DeVry University. I then thank the Lord for seeing my through another day just before I close my eyes.
What does the Commonwealth means to me? The Commonwealth as defined by the Oxford dictionary is ‘an association of United Kingdom and its dependencies together with independent states that were formerly part of the British Empire’. To me the Commonwealth means Opportunity and Choice: the opportunity of education, health care, social & cultural development, sustainability, empowerment and the choice of being individuals.
The Commonwealth provides the foundation for developing its members to be self-sufficient and self-sustainable by developing its most important resource, its human resource. And as a result of these opportunities we now have a choice in how and what we develop into, whether we use the opportunities to develop ourselves and our country or not. Through its plan of action in tandem with the millennium development goals, the Commonwealth provides its members with the best practices, information, appropriate aid and support to develop its people and by and large its country. Without the entities like the Commonwealth lots of the opportunities afforded to us would not exist.
