By Clifford Stanley

NEW YORK-BASED Guyanese Marcia Nicholson, a former resident of Lichfield, West Coast Berbice and pupil of the Lichfield Primary School, has rewarded that school’s top 11 pupils at the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) examinations with backpacks and other school supplies; and has given similar gifts to the three top pupils at the Grade 5 examinations, in order to encourage them to work hard preparing for the Grade Six examinations next year.These incentives were given to recipient pupils during the school’s graduation exercise held recently, where Nicholson reminded parents, teachers and pupils that her father — the late Alwyn Nicholson, also known as Alwyn Prince – had, in recent years, been donating prizes to the school’s NGSA top performers before his death last year; and that her mother, Cynthia Nicholson, had been a Senior Mistress at that very primary school.

“I am hereby taking up the slack left by my father’s death. I am committed to encouraging you, children in the village and its environs, to excel in your school work; and to support the work of the teachers who nurture you. God willing, I will do this every year. I will continue where my father left off,” she said.

Marcia Nicholson was a Senior Mistress at the Bladen Hall Multilateral School on the East Coast of Demerara before she migrated to the USA in 2002, where she is still engaged in teaching. She visits Guyana regularly. Her visit this year was timed to coincide with the graduation exercise of the Lichfield Primary School.

She said that when she returns to New York, she is committed to sending additional reading materials to the school through a Guyana/America friendship group based in the USA.