Chelsea, ambassador for change

Chelsea Dookhie being crowned as Miss Teen Awareness on November 11 at Central Bank Auditorium, Port of Spain.
Chelsea Dookhie being crowned as Miss Teen Awareness on November 11 at Central Bank Auditorium, Port of Spain.

IT took a beauty pageant to open Chelsea Dookhie’s yes to the ugliness of suicide and its prevalence among youth and terminally ill patients. Now she’s an ambassador for suicide awareness.

Over the next year, Dookhie will be visiting schools, raising awareness among her peers and encouraging discussions about mental health and suicide, after winning the Miss Teen Awareness Beauty Pageant, which took place on November 11 at the Central Bank Auditorium, Port of Spain.

Before entering the competition, the 16-year-old student of St Joseph’s Convent, San Fernando, lower sixth form, had no inkling that in TT in 2018 90 people would have ended their own lives, and that suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15 to 29-year-olds globally.

Dookhie comes from Tableland and represented that area in the pageant.

If her dance tutor, Michael Salickram, had not encouraged her to enter the pageant, even thought the deadline had passed, Dookhie would not have had the awareness nor the passion to de-stigmatise suicide and try to persuade those who may be contemplating self-harm to consider other options.

“Now that I have an awareness, I want to help other people to prevent them from taking their own lives, beyond my reign,” Dookhie said in an interview.

The pageant, founded by the nonprofit organisation MORE (Manufacturers of Real Empowerment) in 2015, has, over the years, merged beauty with social issues with the aim of finding solutions.

Having lost one of its delegates to suicide a few years ago, pageant organiser Timon Olivieri was moved to include a suicide-awareness theme.

In addition to public speaking, modelling and make-up application training, each of the 13 delegates was tasked with a “passion project,” which, in this case, involved a PowerPoint and video presentation on suicide.

Dookhie’s project focused on terminally ill patients who commit suicide.

“The most shocking thing for me was learning how many terminally ill patients took their lives. I always thought that people who had terminal diseases would embrace their lives and live each day to the fullest,” she said, having lost an aunt to cancer. “Through my research I found many of them tried to speed up the process by ending their lives.

“I created a PowerPoint presentation on that and for my video presentation I went to Palmiste Park, San Fernando, where I interviewed people on the topic and was able to educate some of them who were unaware.

“I also did not know so many teens attempted and actually committed suicide. I did not know there were so many causes either, that things like depression, family issues, financial problems were factors that could turn someone’s whole life around.”

Dookhie won not only the competition, but also best passion project, best interview, best evening gown and talent competition. In the talent competition she performed an Indian dance, choreographed by Salickram, with whom she has been dancing for the past 13 years. She is the first of the two daughters of her parents Snr Supt Totaram Dookhie and Cherry-Ann Dookhie. Her sister is ten-year-old Jada.

Dookhie said the competition has satisfied her desire to enter a pageant for now, and she is focusing on writing CAPE exams next year. Entering the competition, coupled with its training over the past four months, proved a challenge, as she had to manage her studies along with pageant duties. But she achieved success in both, having passed her CSEC subjects with grade ones.

Dookhie’s wish to become a doctor was influenced by her aunt’s death of cancer: she hopes one day to specialise in oncology.

“I did not always like medicine. It was a career path my mum chose for me, but I was really influenced by watching Grey’s Anatomy on television, and when I did biology, chemistry and physics in form five, I realised it was so interesting and the idea of being a doctor grew on me. I love helping people. It feels good. I want to make a difference. I want to find a cure for cancer. I wish I could change it in the moment,” she said.

To her peers and others who may be undergoing challenges, she asked them to consider others who may be going through greater pain and struggle.

“Be grateful for life, for whatever you have. Believe in your dreams, be influenced by people like Oprah Winfrey, who overcame her rough childhood to be what she is today. God has put each and everyone of us on this earth for a purpose and he only gives you a battle because he knows you can get through it. Just pray and you will get through,” she said.

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