Nicholas Cumberbatch

Nicholas Cumberbatch was a student at St. Mary’s College and thereafter a teacher at Belmont Intermediate School.  He was a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Cadet Force, rose to highest rank as a student, and was among the first in the country to receive the Duke of Edinburgh Award.  He graduated with MSc in Microbiology from the University of Manitoba, Canada.  As a PhD candidate in Medical Microbiology, he published articles in scientific journals.  At University, he started the first Caribbean radio program to provide a connection to the small Caribbean community in Winnipeg.  He provided opportunities for Caribbean artistes to perform throughout North America; coordinated the Caribbean cultural content at the 1990 Pan Am Games in Winnipeg; founded the first World Music Festival in Canada.  Upon return to Trinidad in 2006, he was part of the Commission of Enquiry into Public Health Care Services in Trinidad and Tobago and was subsequently a Project Manager with the Health Sector Reform Program, Ministry of Health.  In 2010, he initiated and coordinated the Celebration of 100 years of Cadets at CIC and QRC as well as co-authored the Centenary Publication.  He was then asked to visit secondary schools to encourage students to join the Trinidad and Tobago Cadet Force. Through this effort A.S.J.A. Girls College, Charlieville became the first All-Girls School to be admitted into the Cadet Force.  Also, this resulted in a significant increase in the number of cadets at Success Laventille Secondary School. It was at this school he met Principal Hamida Baksh and started to provide assistance and guidance.  This led to him to coordinating the first visit to Cuba of the Success Laventille Secondary School, Steel Orchestra.  Since then, he co-founded and became a Director of the Trinidad and Tobago-Cuba Educational and Cultural Exchange.  Currently, he is the President of the Trinidad and Tobago Association for the Hearing Impaired (TTAHI) and in this capacity, he advocated for the inclusion of the deaf community in the virtual CAPSS Conference 2021. He has been making efforts to upgrade TTAHI, which was established as a statutory body by the Act #53 of Parliament, to operate as a more business-like model. Recent accomplishments include the Strategic Plan 2022-2025, the Organization Restructuring and upgrading of the two schools for the Deaf, Cascade and Audrey Jeffers. On the horizon he is making efforts to extend the hearing care services to Tobago and other remote areas. However, his passion is to establish all-inclusive pre-school education so that both deaf and hearing students could start education by learning sign language just as any other subject.  He is adamant that parents of deaf children will have become more involved and empowered in the education of their children from birth.