Enterprise girl visits Buckingham Palace, honored by Queen for community work

Jul 04, 2017 News, http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....-for-community-work/

An Enterprise, East Coast Demerara woman has made her community and the country proud after she visited Buckingham Palace last month, meeting Queen Elizabeth and Prince Harry and receiving a prestigious award for her work in suicide and other social issues.

Samantha Sheoprashad, 27, has been cited for her work with disadvantaged communities and is working to reduce suicide rates in Guyana.

She is the President of Enterprise Youth Development Group (EYDG), which runs several initiatives including providing clothes and food to low income families, organising Christmas parties for children living in orphanages and offering community computer classes.

Under her leadership, EYDG also ran a suicide prevention project, which offered support to people at risk.

She recently completed the research thesis ‘Identifying depression from social media content’ and created an algorithm which processes natural language to detect ‘depressive statements’ in social media posts. She hopes this system will be applied to help to prevent people in Guyana from taking their own lives.

Some 60 persons from Commonwealth countries are chosen for the Queen’s Young Leaders programme.

Prince Harry, during the awards ceremony, gave a speech praising the young people and congratulating them on their awards.

In addition to her whirlwind visit to the Palace, Sheoprashad has participated in a BBC programme, among other things.