Winners announced for Post Office essay competition

Statement by Senator Jeffrey Baron

Good Afternoon,

I am pleased to announce that the Bermuda Post Office (BPO) have selected the winners of the BPO Essay Competition – How To Make the Post Office More Relevant To Young People.

As the Post Office embarked on its journey to be a more innovative, customer focused and sustainable postal service, we recognized that reaching out to students would be essential to communicate its message the BPO was striving to evolve into a modern, electronic friendly service.

In order to include young people in this process the BPO developed the competition – How  To Make The Post Office More Relevant To Young People - a competition open to all students both in Government and Private Schools. The competition was part of the BPO’s Schools Awareness Programme which is designed to engage students in a holistic discussion about the role and history of the BPO, build greater awareness among students of how the mail system works and help students to improve their communication skills.

We were delighted that Principals from both Government and Private Schools agreed to support our Schools Awareness Program, the centerpiece of which was the essay competition. We know that students will benefit greatly from improving their writing skills, a key component in developing effective communication skills. We also intend to encourage young people to use the Post Office to send cards and letters to loved ones on birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and all other special occasions.

I am very happy to acknowledge that the response was highly encouraging as we received submissions from the Berkeley Institute, Somerset Primary, Bermuda Institute and Prospect Primary. Many of the submissions illustrated that young people are very attuned to modern trends in communication and it was difficult in many cases to select the winners from each school.

This afternoon I have the distinct pleasure in announcing the winners, who are as follows: Ciboney Swan, Zayde Smith, Jaden Kowalchuk, Jamin Fubler, Yukia Hall, Yasmine Tull, Xienne Burch, Ken Kelly, Ahyma Peets, Rakshana Sureshkumar and Jaiquan Outerbridge.

Before we proceed to the awards ceremony I would be remiss if did not mention the most generous support from our sponsors:

Digicel Bermuda, CellOne Bermuda, The Royal Gazette, Bermuda Broadcasting Company, and The Complete Office, who have offered to provide the prizes for the Essay Competition. Without their support, this initiative would not have been possible and I would like to warmly recognize their support for the students of Bermuda.

Thank you!