(Kaieteur News) – The curtains came down as several outstanding Guyanese nationals were bestowed with prestigious U.S. Congressional Awards on Saturday night at the Diamond Jubilee Independence Gala and Award Ceremony. The glitzy, sold-out event, hosted by the Guyana Independence Celebration Committee New York (GICC), took place at the Weldon B. Smith Theater inside the Edward Davis Center in St. Albans, Queens.

Originally scheduled for late June, organisers strategically moved the gala to the 4th of July to accommodate an international roster of honourees and dignitaries. The evening, according to a statement published by Guyana Independence Celebration Committee New York Committee Chairman, Rickford Burke, served as the grand finale to a jubilee season that kicked off on June 7 with a massive unity concert and parade drawing over 20,000 people to the streets of New York.

The evening’s top accolades were presented to a pair of trailblazing Guyanese women who have made indelible marks on the global stage: Baroness Valerie Amos, former leader of the British House of Lords and current Master of University College Oxford, and of Guyana and the newly designated Chief Justice of the Turks Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards, former acting Chancellor of the Judiciary of Guyana.