Greater Portmore Primary’s Shamara Chin wins diabetes poster competition

A combination of math, art, health and personal experience gave Shamara Chin the edge to win the all-island Diabetes Awareness Month Poster Competition staged by the Ministry of Health and Wellness.

Chin, a 10-year-old student at the Greater Portmore Primary School in St Catherine, was inspired to enter the competition based on her family’s history with the killer disease. Several of her relatives are diagnosed with diabetes, including one of her grandmothers, while other loved ones have died from complications as a result of the illness.

“For my poster entry, I highlighted how to prevent the disease and I did that using polygons. Math is my favourite subject and I talked to my teacher (Judene Murray) about that as a concept for the poster. She was okay with it, and then we worked on it together. I used one of the polygons as an outline to put the drawing together,” said Chin.

The grade-five student shared that she often helps her grandma take her diabetic medicines. “She is a concerned child and being from a family of diabetics, she always asks her Mom, “Why are you taking so many pills? Why are you sticking your finger?” My mom tells her. So, she often says to me, “Mommy, you have to get checked because I don’t want you to have it,” said Chin’s mother, Nina Brown.

TOP WINNERS

The top winners of the Diabetes Awareness Poster Competition were presented with their prizes at a handover function recently. The ministry’s Non-Communicable Disease and Injury Prevention Unit organised the competition held as part of a slew of activities in observance of National Diabetes Awareness Month in November.

Epidemiologist Julia Rowe-Porter said the unit was “pleased with the entries”, as one of the competition’s aims was to encourage children to become advocates of a healthy lifestyle and diet that stave off non-communicable diseases, which is the leading cause of death in Jamaica.

To round out the top three, Tarika-Kae Powell and Tiandra Lewis of Knox Junior School in Manchester were placed second and third, respectively.

Powell, 11 years old, said she entered “to have fun because I usually have fun doing art”. Her piece consisted of a human fighting off diabetes by practising a healthy lifestyle, including regular medicals and having a balanced diet.

Lewis, also 11 years old, was encouraged to enter by her teacher, Apryl Taylor, and agreed to participate to add a voice to educate her peers “who love eating and drinking sugary stuff” about the negative effects of such habits.

Taylor said the participants were drawn from the school’s animation club and thought the competition would be good practice for idea expression by the club’s members.

“The concept came about as the younger generation is into technology and gaming. They told me about power-ups, which are found in action-oriented games, that players gain as points or rewards. So I said let’s work with that. As such, their entries had superheroes and are representative of gaming or cartoon,” said Taylor.

Muralist at Kingston Creative, Deon Simone, was one of the five judges in the competition. In commending the ministry for hosting the competition, Simone said the posters were informative and that Chin’s entry was the strongest in terms of the messaging.

GREAT INITIATIVE

“Getting the younger generation involved to spread the awareness of diabetes is a really great initiative,” said Simone.

The other judges were Chair of the Diabetes Association of Jamaica Steven Chen; arts development and training administrator at the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission, Travis MacDonald; Jamaica Moves in Schools coordinator for the Ministry of Education and Youth and the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Dania Packer; and Dr Rowe-Porter.

Chin received a $40,000 gift certificate from Watts New, while Powell and Lewis got $30,000 and $20,000, respectively. Each winner received a plaque, while Chin was also given a gift basket.

The school with the most submissions was Knox Junior School with eight entries. The school’s teacher, Taylor, was presented with a $40,000 gift certificate from Watts New and a gift basket.

Chin said: “Take care of yourself, live a healthy life, go to the doctor regularly to have check-ups to make sure you don’t have anything, and be safe.”