2 posts tagged “nigel baptiste”
CariFin e-news welcomes Mr. Nigel Baptiste Executive Director of Republic Bank Limited to give the editorial in the second edition of our e-newsletter.
Welcome to the 3rd. Edition of the CariFin E-Newletter.
CariFin 2009 is upon on once again. CariFin, as a series of events, should be viewed as more than just an opportunity for those who have been keeping themselves in relatively good shape to show off their wellbeing. CariFin should be viewed as an opportunity for each person to measure their progress over the year; for each institution to promote its commitment to wellness; and for the sector to promote greater camaraderie and fellowship among its constituents. Events of the last eighteen months have shown that we, as a community, are more inter-dependent than any of us were probably willing to admit.
If CariFin is to fulfill its potential, greater leadership is required from the very top of each organization. Too often, senior management is invisible at the CariFin activities which have undoubtedly contributed to a dampening of enthusiasm within the organizations themselves. It is very important that Senior Management advertise their own commitment to wellness within the organization by participating in the events and encouraging their colleagues and support staff to do the same.
CariFin is also not about being the quickest. The goal is not always to come first. For my own part, I evaluate the success of my participation by the improvement shown from one year to the other. Each individual will always have their own set of circumstances to deal with during the intervening period and therefore each individual will always be best placed to establish their own success criteria. For at least one person that I know, success is defined by completing each event. I would therefore like to encourage each participant and organization to set their goals and use these to evaluate their performance.
As an event, I would like to encourage the organizing committee to revisit the criteria used for awarding prizes. There will always be a fastest male and female runner and these need to be acknowledged. We need however to begin to also reward the other (and to my mind more important) values upon which CariFin are founded: team spirit; self-improvement; and versatility. It will not be easy to decide upon the criteria that should be used to do so, but nothing good in life is ever achieved easily.
In closing, I would like to commend Wayne Roberts who continues to work assiduously to keep the CariFin community together. Wayne’s blogs and photo albums are always something to look forward to and I would like to encourage him to keep it up. There are a number of national fitness events and to the extent that we can work on putting together a CariFin team to train together and represent the community this will go some way to achieving our camaraderie objective. Let us all make this one of our goals for 2009.
Welcome to the Second Edition of the Carifin e-newsletter!
When Carifin was conceived over 15 years ago, it must have been viewed as a vehicle to foster greater camaraderie within the financial sector, even as we compete with each other on a daily basis. Fifteen years later, the question we must ask ourselves is whether that initial objective is being realized. If in fact this objective for Carifin remains, the challenge as we move forward in the 21st Century is how we make Carifin more relevant. At the moment, Carifin appears to be a one-off series of events with no objective other than encouraging participation by a broad range of institutions.
As the organizers of Carifin seek to redefine its role in the financial community, an innovation such as this e-newsletter is an important first step. The generation and dissemination of information on what is going on within the financial community from a health and fitness perspective must be developed further to include seminars on nutrition, wellness, fitness training and other such topics worthy of being emphasized. Assistance in achieving this objective should be sought from the umbrella institutions such as the BATT and ATTIC as well as the Central Bank.
In addition to the sharing of knowledge, there is a need for greater coordination of sporting activities within the financial sector such as the inter-bank football league, the inter-bank cricket league, Carifin and other events. Consideration should be given to bringing all of these events under one sporting umbrella body for the financial services sector. At the very least, Carifin’s activities need to be broadened to encourage participation throughout the year and by a broader array of individuals.
In this second edition of the newsletter, we will read about a number of individuals who have proudly flown the sporting flag both for their employer of choice and the industry in general. These flag bearers are worthy of salute, even as we look forward to their successes being emulated by others within the financial sector.
