Fellow alumni members, friends, and supporters, as the year 2022 draws to a close and we are actively participating in the festive season of Christmas and other holidays in the month of December, on behalf of the CEO, our Executive and Advisory Boards, we extend a heartfelt Merry Christmas to the entire Cambridge family in Guyana, the United States, England, the Caribbean, and the rest of the world; may the season bring you peace, joy, unity, and comfort.

Aswe bid farewell to 2022 we recall that it was a year with its share of inexactitudes, as things did not always go precisely as we wanted them to go, however, the one important attribute found in the Cambridge family, was our steadfast and unshaken belief in a merciful sovereign God who has never left us, and will continue to provide us with all of our needs and wishes now and for the coming new year, 2023.

Fellow alumni members, friends, and supporters, on Thursday November 24^th, members of our association will join in and celebrate the festivity of Thanksgiving. We will have the good fortune of seeing family and friends who will travel countless miles to celebrate and feast with us on this day that transcends peace, happiness, togetherness, and the bounty God has favored us with. Interestingly enough, evidence abounds that the first thanksgiving tables displayed deer meat, shell fish, cornmeal, dried beans, and bean casseroles; the paradisiac turkey came some years later as an additional center-piece adornment. This progression suggest that adding other delicacies to a Thanksgiving table is both normal and acceptable.

Dear fellow alumni, friends and supporters, welcome to our August 2022 edition of the CAAAI President’s Message. It is summer (in most places), and many of you have taken the opportunity to travel long distances to be with family and friends, especially after two summers of being cooped up at home due to the Covid pandemic. In spite of high gas prices and many air-flight cancellations, in true Cambridge style you rose to the occasion and boldly visited your loved ones, or they visited you in the summer of 2022.

Be assured that your association’s Executive Board Members and Committee Chairpersons dabbled in some recreation time also, but we maintained our commitment to leadership, supervision, deliberation, and decision-making by keeping scheduled Quarterly Meetings and many Committee Meetings online during this season, as required by the CAAAI bylaws.

CAMBRIDGE ACADEMY IS 72-YEARS OLD.

HELLO Fellow alumni and friends, welcome to our March 2022 editorial of the monthly Website and Facebook message. 2021 was an active year for CAAAI in spite of the ravages of the Covid Virus, our Executive Board and membership body rose to every challenge to keep the Alumni Association united, coherent, focused, and involved in virtual events such as Sip-&-Chat, three Prayer Warrior sessions, and significant support to the Nehemiah school, establishing Sub-committees with broader authority, reconstructing the alumni’s Website, increased donations, and trimmed our expenses, among others.

We are now in the third month of 2022, and our membership body has yet another milestone to be proud of, one that we must celebrate joyfully and in reverence, as 2022 marks 72-years since our hero, founder, and Principal, Robert A. Pinkerton started the school on nothing but faith, imagination, and determination.

CAAAI COMMITTEES ARE ‘MAKING THE DREAM WORK’.

Hello fellow alumni and friends, welcome to our September 2021 editorial which turns the spotlight on the outstanding work our initial four committees are doing. This month I would like to talk about the contributions that are being made by our committee members, and the tremendous successes derived from their work. I am so grateful for the dedication of Committee Leaders and Volunteers who work tirelessly to plan, develop, and implement programs that benefit the membership body and our friends. You may recall, at our first Executive Board meeting for the year on February 21, 2021, the Board voted to authorize Sub-committees to be formed and function autonomously as breakout teams on any project that the Board gives approval to. This mandate gave birth to the Membership and Fundraising, Financial, Prayer Warriors, and Information Committees of the CAAAI.

The Membership Committee, under the leadership of Ms. Lorna Welshman-Neblett is currently working diligently on a fun-filled, interactive, ‘virtual’ tea-party program scheduled to be aired online early November. The purpose of this event is to raise much needed funds for our Nehemiah Comprehensive Partnership School in Georgetown, Guyana. Lorna and her team are putting together this event, and will be looking forward to your support and participation right from in your homes.

REMEMBERING CAMBRIDGE SUMMER MONTHS

Hello fellow alumni and friends, welcome to our August 2021 edition of a walk down memory-lane as we attempt to remember how most of us spent our summers during our high school years. First of all, we did not refer to the five or six weeks away from school as a summer break, we simply called this period ‘no school’, because our beautiful country was and still is blessed with summer all year round, save for the occasional rains, therefore we had no need for meteorological distinctions. When there was no school, as Cambridge youngsters we looked forward to doing a few more activities that school time would normally hinder.

Hello fellow Cambridge alums, friends, and supporters, I welcome you to our July edition of the President’s Monthly Message. One of the highlights that took place last month was the CAAAI’s donation of $2,500 USD ($500,000 GD) to Nehemiah Comprehensive School, it’s partnership school in Guyana. Former Counsel General, and CAAAI Advisory Board Member Ms. Barbara Atherly proudly made the official presentation to Ms. Osman the school’s Founder and Director on Tuesday June 15, 2021.

Hello esteemed alumni members, friends, and supporters, welcome to our June President’s Message, and thank you for allowing me to share some observations with you. This June promises to be the month of Covid decline, cicada invasion, and high-school graduations.

Congratulations to all Cambridgeittes who are connected in some way to this year’s High School and College graduation season. For awhile it was touch and go, as many school administrations struggled with whether or not Covid restrictions would allow our loved ones to actually walk across the stage on their momentous day. But with faith, our ‘little ones’ got fitted for their caps, gowns, and overall regalia with the hope of taking the walk that we parents and grand-parents look forward to so much. We can’t pretend, last year’s 2020 graduations were somewhat different. Many of our young (and adult) students did not walk the stage, and settled for signs outside their doors and on their lawns announcing their graduations; some had graduation ‘drive-by’ parties.

Hello esteemed alumni members, friends, and supporters, welcome and thank you for sharing my message for the month of May.  An important commitment among members of the CAAAI Executive Branch is to promote positive thinking and forward thinking.  With this in mind, we prayerfully and eagerly look forward to states around this country and in the Caribbean to fully open up soon in a ‘post covid’ environment.  We are also aware that covid has negatively affected Cambridge Alumni members and their families in different ways to include health, finance, working from home, teaching our children at home, and job losses due to companies that closed their doors since the beginning of the pandemic.  But we are determined to bounce right back as conditions return to normal, and as the job markets begin opening up again.

In order to do that, we must be prepared to re-enter the workplace at any and every level. We also know that (no fault of ours) some of us have not done a job interview for sometime, so I hope that the following simple tips will be of help to someone in getting ready for a new job or regaining an old one.

Hello esteemed members, friends, and supporters of the CAAAI, welcome to the month of April, the month we all look forward to fresh new beginnings, blooming flowers, the spring season, Easter, and longer daylight hours each and every day. As promised, I plan to reach out to you every month with a message that hopefully will keep us together and informed. This month, I would like to talk a little about what is foremost in the minds of everyone, and that is the Coronavirus Vaccine. As you know, there has been much talk about vaccine efficacy, vaccine availability, slow registrations and long lines, and perhaps the fear of something negative happening to us as a result of taking the vaccine. I understand. I also understand that members have lost family and friends to this ‘covid beast’ that stole them away from us; may their memories be always with us and give us the strength to carry on for them.

We are grateful that among the many destabilizing factors brought on by the coronavirus, our CAAAI Executive Board convened its first meeting of the new year by Zoom, on Sunday February 21, 2021. Our gathering was blessed with the additional presence of the three Advisory Board members, Dr. Frank Douglas, Dr. Myrtle Adams-Smartt, Former Guyana’s Consul-General to New York Ms. Barbara Atherly; and a newly appointed Board Member Ms. Grace Peters-Syfox. In the opinion of many, the full and enthusiastic attendance of all participants at the meeting seems to suggest that CAAAI is still a vibrant and purpose-driven alumni association that cannot and will not be daunted by anything, and that the hopes and goals of its members to ‘give back to Guyana’ are crystal clear.