2013 RADAR

Jerome Cowan - Bright, young leader

Jerome Cowan was a winner of the first international Scotiabank Bright Young Leaders Award last year. The award recognises youth who make outstanding contributions to their communities.

The young man from inner-city Kingston is a volunteer in several organisations. He gave his prize money to Rise Life Management Services, LEAD Youth Club (Leaders Endeavouring for Adolescents Development) and Junior Achievement Jamaica.

"It is highly motivational to receive this international recognition from Scotiabank," Cowan said about the award in June last year. It was not the first honour for Cowan. He already won the 2011 Youth Award for Excellence for Kingston from the Governor General's Achievement Awards.

The Bright Future programme is the Scotiabank's global philanthropic initiative which brings together all of its charitable, social and community efforts and employee volunteer activities under one banner. In the Caribbean, Latin and Central America, the programme focuses primarily on children and their causes.

Ristananna Tracey - Most improved female athlete

Jamaica has some extremely talented sports personalities, and Ristananna Tracey stepped out to be among them as she won the Racers Track and Field Club Zenith Awards 2013 as the Most Improved Female Athlete of the Year.

Tracey is a national 400m hurdles junior record holder and she took part in the Olympic Games in Moscow in August last year. Although she couldn't fulfill her goal and qualify for the final of her group at that event, Tracey is one of the up-and-coming sportspersons of the nation. 400m hurdle champion, Melaine Walker is Tracey's biggest athletic inspiration.

Her unusual name, Ristananna, Tracey got from a coincidence. As she was born, her mother sent someone to register the baby, but she didn't write down the chosen name, Rascean. The person forgot it and, therefore, the runner has this name, she told The Gleaner last year.

Valerie Facey - Excellence in business and philanthropy

The University of the West Indies awarded Valerie Facey with the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters for her "excellence in business and philanthropy". Facey is founder and director of The Mill Press which started in 1990. The Mill Press published a variety of prize-winning books on Jamaica's heritage, art, history, biography and poetry. The publishing house was founded by Facey and her husband, the late Honourable Maurice Facey, and today, their children, Stephen B. Facey and Laura Facey Cooper, lead the family business.

Barry Higman - Outstanding scholarship in Caribbean history

The University of the West Indies (UWI) conferred an Honorary Doctor of Laws on Professor Emeritus Barry Higman for his "outstanding scholarship in the field of Jamaican and Caribbean history."

In 1967, Higman came to Jamaica as a young Australian student to finish his Master's Degree in West Indian History on a post- graduate scholarship from the University of Sydney.

He spent 25 years at the Department of History, serving twice as its head, (1984-1987 and 1990-1993).

The UWI terms Higman's first book: Slave Population and Economy in Jamaica, 1807-1834 as a 'milestone publication in the field of Caribbean history'. Higman has published 12 books.

He won several awards in Australia and the Caribbean, including the Gordon K. Lewis Award of the Caribbean Studies Association (2000) and the Elsa Goveia Book Prize of the Association of Caribbean Historians (1986 and 1999) among them.

The historian returned to Australia to teach at the Australian National University in 1996. Higman is now retired, but visited the UWI for the semester II 2013/14. He will teach modules in the graduate courses in heritage studies, e.g. oral history: value and techniques, and historic landscapes and environmental history.