Caribbean Person of the Year Award 2022

Grenada PM is EVERYBODY'S Magazine 2022 Person of the Year

Loop, 23 December 2022

EVERYBODY’S, the 45-year-old Caribbean-American magazine, Person of the Year 2022 is Grenada’s Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell.  
Although most EVERYBODY’S subscribers across the US may have received the Person of the Year/2023 Global Caribbean Edition (December issue), the official announcement was made on December 21 at City Hall in New York, NY when the 2021 Person of the Year Award was formally presented to Mayor Eric Adams. His honour extended congratulations to Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell.  

In 1978, to commemorate the 1st anniversary of Everybody’s, Helen Beatrice Lucas, born in Carriacou, Grenada, who passed in 2021 at age 104, suggested that the magazine honour a man and a woman each year.  

Caribbean-New Yorkers such as Simeon Simmonds of St Vincent, Jacqueline Cornelius of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Benjamin Watkins of Barbados, Lola Simon-Assanh of Guyana joined her committee supported by Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, Dr Muriel Petioni Malcolm X’s physician and Manhattan Borough president Percy Sutton.  

By 1985, honorees such as Nobel Laureate Sir Arthur Lewis, Prime Minister Tom Adams of Barbados, Prime Minister Eugenie Charles of Dominica and labour leader Peter Ottley attended the magazine’s dinners with proceeds going to charitable organisations such as Marcus Garvey Nursing Home in NY and US $30,000 to charitable institutions in Grenada and Dominica.  

In 1989 the magazine ended its Person of the Year elegant dinner/dance in favour of presenting Oliver Samuels’s plays from Jamaica and calypso concerts in venues such as Madison Square Garden and Lincoln Center.  

Beginning in 2023, the magazine will honour its Person of the Year at a public event.  Should Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell accept the magazine’s invitation he will be honoured in September at the Kings Theater or Claire Tow-Whitham Hall in New York or the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in September 2023.

 
EVERYBODY’S subscribers play a crucial role in selecting the Person of the Year.  The editorial team discusses the six to seven nominees who amassed the most votes with a cross section of people in the Caribbean diaspora before selecting one of the top contenders.  

This year’s top contenders in alphabetical order were:  
•    Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor, UWI, Barbados
•    Letitia James, NY State Attorney General  
•    Dickon Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada  
•    Machel Montano, Soca artist, Trinidad and Tobago
•    Wes Moore, Governor- elect and Jamaican American, Maryland  
•    Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados (EBM 2021 PoY)
•    Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Olympian, Jamaica (EMB 2019 PoY)  

December 2022