Brain Trust Competition: Loreto of Quatre Bornes bags first prize

The finals of the 2017 Brain Trust Competition took place on Tuesday 30 May. Initiated by the Rotary Club of Port Louis, the competition is dedicated to Higher School Certificate (HSC) students. The team from Loreto College Quatre Bornes bagged the first prize for their excellent debating skills.

Initially launched by the Rotary Club of Port Louis some 40 years ago, the Brain Trust Competition still knows much success among HSC students. Indeed this year, the quarter-finals, held at Greenwich University Pakistan, Ebène, gathered 16 schools from around Mauritius.  

The Brains Trust Competition was set up to encourage the use of English and to demonstrate the current excellence of English speaking in schools.  From the 16 quarter-finals, four schools qualified for the Final of the competition namely Royal College Curepipe, Loreto College of Quatre Bornes, the Queen Elizabeth College and Dr Maurice Curé State College.

The topic chosen for the Finals was “Preserving our National Heritage whilst moving forward socially and developing our economy”.  The panel of assessors consisted of Dr Linda Mamet, PhD in Plant Science, Neeta Ramchurn and Rab Nawaz, Manager Academics of Greenwich University Pakistan. Students were evaluated on several factors namely ideas, proposition, content, delivery, pronunciation, vocabulary use, teamwork. Each team was allocated eleven minutes to present and debate on the topic. The most challenging part of the contest was the sharing of the tasks and equal debate time among team members. 

In fact, the competition sets out to challenge the intelligence and reasoning skills of the team members, and to stretch their public speaking, presentation and team work skills by means of a modified debating format. All teams gave brilliant performances throughout. The Loreto College Quatre Bornes team was declared the winner after a close contest. The team, comprising of students Medhavi Bissoonauth, Kenza Joomabocus, Shabneez Nujeebun, Ameeral Mallam Hassam and Abhisha Bhowany, was warmly congratulated for its teamwork as well as the content of the exposés and the quality of its delivery, although the other teams were also highly rated.

At the end of the contest, every Finalist was presented with a Certificate of participation and a gift. The winning school was awarded a Trophy whilst the participating finalists also received their trophy. These were presented by Mike Burman, President of the Rotary Club of Port Louis, Dr Linda Mamet, Chairperson of the panel of assessors and Professor Serge Rivière, Chairman of the Vocational Committee, Rotary Club of Port Louis. The Coordinator of the competition and the MC for the Final was Past President David Floyd, Rotarian, who was ably assisted by Professor Serge Rivière, and Rotarian Bugsy Daswani. It is also important to highlight that each participant in the quarter finals also received a Certificate of Participation.

Acting as a forum to air the views of young people on the significant issues of the day, the brain Trust competition aims to enhance mass audience appeal still further in 2018. The final held at MBC Studio A and will be televised by the MBC in July. The Rotary Club of Port Louis thanks the MBC, Greenwich University Pakistan, all sixteen schools which took part and their teachers, and the team of assessors, consisting of professionals, spouses and friends of Rotarians.