SSCAAT Christmas Dinner 2018

Vibert Anthony Mahanger R.I.P.

Requesting a school holiday from Governor Alfred Savage

MAHANGER, MD, VIBERT ANTHONY It is with immense sorrow and regret that the sisters and brothers and their spouses, of Dr. Vibert Anthony Mahanger – Yvonne (Claude), Lorraine (Roy), Veronica, Dereck, Barbara (Andrew) and Patrick (Kevin) - announce his passing in Boynton Beach, Florida, on October 21, 2018. Vibert was born on February 29, 1936, in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana). He was the cherished son of the late Juliette and Joseph Mahanger and much-loved brother of the late Joseph, Romeo, Leonard and Therese Marie. Vibert left BG in 1956 to study medicine in the US. He received his BS from Grinnell College, Iowa and his MD from the University of Rochester, NY, interning at Strong Memorial in Rochester. He was a solo family practitioner in Churchville, NY, for nearly 30 years – sometimes serving three generations of one family. In 2004 he became a Compensation and Pensions physician at the VA Out-Patient Clinic in Fort Myers, FL, where he practiced for some two more years until his retirement. A visionary who foresaw the future of electronic medical records systems, Dr. Mahanger designed and implemented in his Churchville practice his own innovative computer records platform, which he called E-SCALPEL, to reflect comprehensive input from his patients, other doctors, hospitals and health care organizations, thereby maximizing efficient and effective patient care. Vibert was loved and will be missed by many other family members and friends, including his nieces and nephews and their spouses, his great-nieces and nephews, his cousin Patricia (Bert) and his dear childhood friend June Ann.

Visit to Saints by SCCAAT President

Address to students by Mr. Roger Devers

Mrs. Fazia Baksh, Staff, Mr. Chris Fernandes,

Thank you for the opportunity to address the students at this assembly.

My name is Roger Devers and I am the current President of the St. Stanislaus College Alumni Association in Toronto.

I am here today to bring you warmest wishes (or should I say coldest) as well as financial support for scholarship recipients as well as funding for new furniture for the upper classrooms and other items, from our association in Toronto.

Our association was started some 25 years ago from an appeal by Bobby Fernandes of the local association to Errol Campbell, a classmate of his living in Toronto. The appeal was for financial assistance to eliminate a major problem of termites eating away at the college. It did not take long for many of the previous graduates of the College to get together to make a difference, when they learnt of the serious issues faced by their old alma mater. Over the years we have provided millions of Guyana dollars to support the College.

Why do we do this? As we grow older, we come to realize that whatever success we have achieved in our lives can be attributed to these most important years that we have spent here. The friends we make become lifelong friends. We may not see them for years, but when we come together again, it was if we were never apart.

So, make friends and help and respect each other. Respect your parents, Teachers and everyone as well as the facility that you attend. Listen carefully and work hard. You do not have to be the brightest in your class to be successful. Many of the graduates from this college have gone on to be successful in their chosen profession, whether as doctors, lawyers, managers, plumbers, electricians, entrepreneurs, real-estate agents etc.

One tip I will leave with you as you graduate from this institution and that is. Network. Join your local alumni association. You will find that “who you know”, is just as important as your qualification in getting ahead in your chosen profession. The previous graduates are more than willing to assist those coming behind them.

Thank you very much and I wish you all every success as you go forward.

SSCAAT Annual Fall Dance, 2018

Reminder: SSCAAT New Year's Eve Gala 2018

https://stanislauscollege.blogspot.com/2018/05/planning-for-sscaat-new-years-party.html

Giridharadas: Winners Take All

 

 An insider's groundbreaking investigation of how the global elite's efforts to "change the world" preserve the status quo and obscure their role in causing the problems they later seek to solve.

Former New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can--except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. We see how they rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; how they lavishly reward "thought leaders" who redefine "change" in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm. We hear the limousine confessions of a celebrated foundation boss; witness an American president hem and haw about his plutocratic benefactors; and attend a cruise-ship conference where entrepreneurs celebrate their own self-interested magnanimity.

Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? He also points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world. A call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike.

KIRKUS REVIEW

Give a hungry man a fish, and you get to pat yourself on the back—and take a tax deduction.

It’s a matter of some irony, John Steinbeck once observed of the robber barons of the Gilded Age, that they spent the first two-thirds of their lives looting the public only to spend the last third giving the money away. Now, writes political analyst and journalist Giridharadas (The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas, 2014, etc.), the global financial elite has reinterpreted Andrew Carnegie’s view that it’s good for society for capitalists to give something back to a new formula: It’s good for business to do so when the time is right, but not otherwise. Moreover, business has co-opted philanthropy, such that any “world-changing” efforts come with a proviso: “if you really want to change the world, you must rely on the techniques, resources, and personnel of capitalism.” Philanthropic initiatives to effect social change are no longer the province of public life but instead are private and voluntary, in keeping with free market individualism. Naturally, there’s a layer of consultants and in-house vice presidents to manage all this largess, which hinges on the premise that things aren’t so bad and just need to be nudged along. The author memorably calls this process “Pinkering,” after the ameliorist-minded psychologist Steven Pinker. “It beamed out so many thoughts about why the world was getting better in recent years,” Giridharadas writes of one initiative, “that its antennae failed to detect all the incoming transmissions about all the people whose lives were not improving, who didn’t care to be Pinkered because they knew what they were seeing.” So what’s so bad about private giving? Answers the author, when a society elects to help, it expresses democratic values with an eye to equality, while private giving is inherently unequal, a power relation between “the giver and the taker, the helper and the helped, the donor and the recipient.”

A provocative critique of the kind of modern, feel-good giving that addresses symptoms and not causes.

 Of Interest
 http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/anand-giridharadas-on-winners-take-all.html
https://www.npr.org/2018/08/29/642688220/generous-giving-or-phony-philanthropy-a-critique-of-well-meaning-winners

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS is the author of The True American and India Calling. He was a foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times from 2005 to 2016, and has also written for The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. He is an Aspen Institute fellow, an on-air political analyst for MSNBC, and a former McKinsey analyst. He teaches journalism at New York University and has spoken on the main stage of TED. His writing has been honored by the Society of Publishers in Asia, the Poynter Fellowship at Yale, and the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Award. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Congratulations to Mrs Fazia Baksh, Principal St. Stanislaus College

Mrs Baksh came to St. Stanislaus from Queen's College on February 3, 2014 as Deputy Principal specializing in the teaching of Geography.and is particularly interested in Curriculum Development.

Of Interest
https://guyaneseonline.net/2018/08/27/guyana-st-stanislaus-college-students-achieve-overall-96-passes-at-csec-cape/
Saint Stanislaus CSEC and CAPE results 2018