Wairarapa’s locally owned community newspaper
WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 2021
INSIDE: Makuri School goes to the big smoke P6
P4-5
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Finding the right words
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Examining the Biblical principle of “love thy neighbour as thyself” has helped Solway College student Sheryl Chand to stand up against racial discrimination. She recently won the Race Unity Speech Award for Advocacy. JOHN LAZO-RON reports. Sheryl Chand, 16, suffered from racial prejudice growing up. A migrant whose family moved to New Zealand from Fiji 12 years ago, Sheryl quickly became a victim of racial discrimination during her primary school years. She was constantly called derogatory terms such as a “curry muncher”. Sheryl would often go home feeling emotionally shattered from the tirade of verbal abuse. When she arrived home, she would have her parents, Rozleen and Albert Chand, always there to comfort her and encourage her to stand up against what was being said to her. “Growing up in New Zealand and being a Fijian migrant, I was not spared from racial prejudice,”
Sheryl Chand. PHOTO/SUPPLIED
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Sheryl told Midweek. “I felt isolated from everyone else because I was somewhat different. It was like I couldn’t fit in. “When I went home, my parents would always encourage me by telling me that I must stand up for myself and be strong so that’s what I decided to do.” Sheryl said she then started to “change herself” by not allowing the verbal arrows shot at her to sink into her mind and heart by letting people know what they said was wrong. “My parent’s encouragement slowly groomed me as a person to be able to say, “this is not right; what you’re doing is wrong”,” she said. “I may have faced a lot of racial prejudice, but I have been able to fight it now.” She showed that strength on the big stage when she recently won the 2021 Race Unity Speech Award for Advocacy. Continued on page 3