Sixteen-year-old Hailee Harding of Graydon Sealy Secondary School said it was a “rough” road to becoming Barbados’ new Junior Minister of Tourism 2024-2025, but is elated to have reached her desired destination.
She emerged winner from among a field of six contestants yesterday at the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc’s (BTMI) Barbados Tourism Youth Congress 2024, at the Hilton hotel. She narrowly defeated Mikkel Roberts of Alexandra School by one point, while Malika Straker of The Lester Vaughan School was third.
The other contestants were Dalinda Maynard of Princess Margaret Secondary School, Jaydn Gill of Harrison College and Makayla Lowe of The Ellerslie School.
Harding burst into tears on hearing her name announced and was tightly embraced by mother Kikeisha Rollock and hugged by her teachers Jaime Carrington and Cheryl Williams, who prepared her for the competition.
She also received congratulations and words of encouragement from outgoing Junior Minister Jordan Greig.
“It has been a rough journey . . . . I can’t believe I have done it. I worked so hard – so many people worked with me, so many people had my back and all I could think about coming into this was how I did not want to let those people down,” she said.
In congratulating the participants, chief executive officer of the BTMI Andrea Franklin said she hoped many of them would choose careers in the tourism industry, as “over the years we have had the instance of people moving away from the sector and we need to get young minds back in tourism”. She added: “Tourism continues to be the mainstay of our country’s economic development and therefore safeguarding the future of the industry is of paramount importance.”