“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” — Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR).

One of the more renowned quotes by FDR was one of the more resounding statements of the Caribbean Organisation of Tax Administrators (COTA) Award Ceremony held last Thursday. The ceremony was kept on the sixth floor of the Office Centre Building, in downtown, Kingston. The event was under the direction of the Tax Administration Services Department (TASD); the organisation was celebrating its 10th anniversary and this ceremony was just one event of last week’s planned activities.

This year marked the second time this competition was held with the first being in 2004. Local product Shaneek Frank of William Knibb Memorial High School was the region’s champion then and without a doubt 2009 winner, Remon Goulbourne of Campion College, will be hoping to equate this feat and take the title home to Jamaica.

The topic for this year’s COTA competition was “Building Efficient Tax Administration in promoting national and Regional Development”, geared towards creating awareness of taxation policies, as well as to develop an interest in the general public to pursue tax administration as a career choice.

Propelled by his passion for learning, Remon Goulbourne, 17-year-old lower sixth-former interested in pursuing a career in medicine, wrote the 1,000-word essay.

He told TEENage that he saw the advertisement for the competition in a local newspaper and decided to “give it a shot” because in his opinion “the topic was interesting and relevant” and as such he wanted to vocalise his outlook on the subject. He received resounding applause from all present after reading his winning work.

Campion College may have claimed top position, but Cornwall College claimed two mentions, as both runners-up came from their ranks. Second-place went to 17-year-old Garett-Dijan Fairclough, a lower sixth-form student of Cornwall College. Fairclough is no stranger to essay-writing competitions, placing first in the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association ( FCCA) competition, won by Shaquille Brown,14, of St Andrew High School for Girls.

So ambitious is this young TEEN achiever that he sees himself pursuing a career in law or medicine. Third-place went to Khamal Clayton, a classmate of Fairclough’s. Clayton is also quite familiar with essay-writing as he was last year’s runner-up in the US Embassy and Jamaica Observer-sponsored Martin Luther King, Jr Essay Competition.

Both students openly expressed that they have a passion for writing and they enjoy it a lot.

The ceremony, which was under the patronage of the Audley Shaw, minister of finance and the public service, as well as his minister of state, Aurther Williams.

Out of hundreds of entrants from across the country, all three winners were male. It was certainly refreshing for TEENage to see three young men rising above all the stigma and misconceptions surrounding their gender, to emerge victorious.