October 25, 2005 Ten-year-old Shandida Gibbs from ST. Eustatius is winner of Conde' Nast Traveler 2005 "My Caribbean" essay contest.
(St. Thomas, USVI) In an award ceremony today at the Caribbean Tourism
Organization (CTO) Conference in St. Thomas, USVI, the Editor in Chief of Condé
Nast Traveler, Klara Glowczewska, announced that ten-year-old Shandida Greida
Gibbs of St. Eustatius was the winner of the the Condé Nast Traveler "My
Caribbean" Essay Contest. 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 for Caribbean school children, and has
become a symbol of Condé Nast Traveler's commitment to the development of the
Grand prize winner Gibbs received a $2,000 scholarship and the two runners-up
each received a $500 scholarship. Gibbs winning essay will also be featured in
the December 2005 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Given the 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 by collecting bottles, cans, paper, plastic, and removing them
from our environment in a creative way. My taking responsibility for the
environmental on my tranquil and charming island would be a task I would carry
out with lots of pride and joy.
This annual contest is part of a tourism awareness program for school children
between the ages of 8 and 12. Each of the 23 finalists attending the Caribbean
Tourism Conference will receive an eye-opening experience into the world of
tourism. The contest, sponsored by Condé Nast Traveler, the Caribbean Tourism
Organization, and American Airlines, educates elementary school children in the
Caribbean islands about the importance of tourism to their country's economy.
Grade school children of the 32 CTO member countries were asked to submit a 250
word essay on the topic referenced above.
This year's 23 finalists in alphabetical order by country are:
Antigua & Barbuda, Samuel Nurse
Bahamas, Danielle Roberts
Barbados, Gabrielle Farley
British Virgin Islands, Jodi Samuel
Cayman Islands, Clare-Louise McGrath
Montserrat, Karishma Dhera
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 & Caicos, Carolyn Martinez
U.S. Virgin Islands, Dionna Hopkins
All essay finalists, along with their chaperones, were flown to the Caribbean
Tourism Organization's conference by American Airlines. On-island sponsors
include Texaco; Wyndham Sugar Bay Resort & Spa, providing accomodations; Tropic
Tours, providing transportation; Coral World; and the United States Virgin
Condé Nast Traveler's philosophy of "Truth in Travel", where writers pay their
own way, travel unannounced, and are independent from the travel industry, is
unique in the publishing industry. The result is that Condé Nast Traveler
reports on travel the way consumers experience it: freely, fairly, honestly. The
editorial leader in the field, Condé Nast Traveler has won 6 National Magazine
Awards, the highest honor in magazine publishing. Condé Nast Traveler, the 2005
Zagat Survey Best Travel Magazine and a 2004 Advertising Age "A-List" magazine,
has a rate base of 750,000 and is published by Condé Nast Publications, Inc.
