By Leela Ramdeen, Chair, CCSJ & Director, CREDI
I share hereunder a speech I delivered in London at a Thanksgiving Service organised by my now deceased friend, Rev Patricia Stephens, in London in 2011:
Tag: holiday
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Building a culture of inclusion
By Leela Ramdeen, Chair, CCSJ & Director, CREDI
One of the joys of being a citizen, is the fact that we have learned over the years to embrace and respect the rich diversity of our people who have come to T&T from many parts of the world—not as empty vessels, but with their different cultures, traditions, religions, languages and so on. This diversity is a source of strength.
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Arrival and cohesion
“The political and social climate that prevails in the world today emphasises difference, disunity, and destruction rather than the qualities of unity and productive and constructive energy that are required to sustain human societies. These negative processes and forces have perpetuated our alienation from the basic material roots of our existence, the natural world of which we are a part”. —Roxande Lalonde (Unity in Diversity: Acceptance and Integration in an Era of Intolerance and Fragmentation, MA Thesis, 1994)
On Wednesday, May 30, the nation will observe the 173rd anniversary of Indians arriving in T&T. Like Lalonde, I believe that we can have “unity without uniformity and diversity without fragmentation”.