T&T student second in regional climate change story competition

A Trinidad and To­ba­go stu­dent has placed sec­ond in a re­gion­al cli­mate change short sto­ry com­pe­ti­tion, beat­ing more than 170 en­tries from 14 Caribbean coun­tries.

Priya Ramdeo earned sec­ond place in the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Cli­mate Change Cen­tre's (CC­C­CC) 2026 Youth Short Sto­ry Com­pe­ti­tion with her sto­ry, Mas For The Liv­ing Sea, earn­ing a tablet.

The com­pe­ti­tion was won by 22-year-old Sher­di­na An­toine of Do­mini­ca, whose sto­ry, Weath­er­ing Us, was se­lect­ed from 173 sub­mis­sions. She re­ceived a Mac­Book Neo, while Bar­ba­dos' Kait­lyn Grif­fith placed third with The Coast­line of To­mor­row, earn­ing a Kin­dle.

Launched on Ju­ly 27, the com­pe­ti­tion in­vit­ed Caribbean na­tion­als and res­i­dents aged 18 to 25 to re­spond to the prompt: "Imag­ine a cli­mate-se­cure fu­ture for the world. In­spired by the Caribbean."

The ini­tia­tive sought to give young Caribbean writ­ers a plat­form to share their per­spec­tives on cli­mate change, re­silience and the fu­ture of the re­gion through cre­ative sto­ry­telling.

Head of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the CC­C­CC, Danelle De Coteau-Camp­bell, said the re­sponse demon­strat­ed the cre­ativ­i­ty and aware­ness of young peo­ple across the re­gion.

She said the sto­ries re­flect­ed how young peo­ple were not on­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the re­al­i­ties of cli­mate change but al­so had im­por­tant per­spec­tives on the fu­ture the Caribbean was work­ing to build.

Sev­en oth­er writ­ers were named among the com­pe­ti­tion's top 10 fi­nal­ists, in­clud­ing four oth­er Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als: Rayn Coop­er, Priya Jag­ger­nath, Aaliyah Bruce and Venus Abass.

The re­main­ing fi­nal­ists were Ki­jua­na Char­i­ty Bruno of Do­mini­ca, Jadique Ed­wards of Bar­ba­dos and Phile­cia Cham­bers of Ja­maica.

All 10 fi­nal­ists will re­ceive cer­tifi­cates, CC­C­CC pro­mo­tion­al pack­ages and recog­ni­tion on the or­gan­i­sa­tion's web­site and so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

The top five sto­ries will al­so be pub­lished on the CC­C­CC's web­site, caribbean­cli­mate.org, ac­com­pa­nied by pro­fes­sion­al­ly pro­duced au­dio ver­sions.

En­tries came from 14 CARI­COM mem­ber states, in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Guyana and Be­lize.

The sub­mis­sions were as­sessed by a five-mem­ber re­gion­al judg­ing pan­el com­pris­ing writ­ers, lit­er­ary pro­fes­sion­als, ed­u­ca­tors and com­mu­ni­ca­tions spe­cial­ists from across the Caribbean.