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Project to help educate Amerindian women gets UK boost
A privately-organized project to provide funding for Amerindian girls studying to be teachers will begin operating in January.
The project will assist the hinterland students at the Cyril Potter College who are there on their own initiative.
The Hinterland Teachers Support (HTS) programme, the brainchild of environmentalist Annette Arjoon-Martins, will provide financial support, for school supplies and transportation, to young Amerindians, outside the government system, who are aspiring to become primary school teachers in their own communities.
“Our intention is to help them to purchase the essential school supplies which are often beyond their means,” said Arjoon-Martins, “and in their second year, when they have to do practical work away from Cyril Potter, we will also give them a transportation allowance.”
Recently, HTS received a donation of $678,000 from UK-based World Union of Guyanese in London England. World Union of Guyanese was a democracy campaign group that became involved in charity work after 1992. It was dissolved recently and the closing balance fund of sterling £2190 was the amount handed over to the HTS.
The assistance from HTS will run for the full duration of the students’ time at school.
According to Arjoon-Martins, many of the young Amerindian students, not part of the government system, have to drop out of school because they cannot afford the basic expense money associated with their studies.
Arjoon-Martins, herself Amerindian, has raised $4.7M for the project from the sale of a coffee-table book on the Amerindian way of life, produced in 2010 and sponsored by DemToCo.
Involved in the support effort with Arjoon-Martins are Foreign Affairs Minister, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Amerindian Affairs Minister, Pauline Sukhai, Amerindian activist Yvonne Pearson and Jennifer Wishart of the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology.
“I formed this group because they are all Amerindian women, in leadership roles, with a keen understanding of the problems young Amerindian women face and a specific area that we could target where our help would make a difference.”
Representatives of the UK-based, World Union of Guyanese, presenting the cheque to Annette Arjoon-Martins of the Hinterland Teachers Support (HTS) programme (centre). At her right is Foreign Affairs Minister, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett and musician Dave Martins, who both supports the works of the group.
Aside from the financial help, the committee is also intended to serve in a mentorship role for the students as they seek to improve their lives and their communities.
Arjoon-Martins credits her early years in the Pomeroon, growing up with a maternal Arawak grandmother, Rosalyn Murray, for her insight into the severely limited avenues for young women in hinterland communities. “Going back to visit in my teen years I started to see many of these girls I knew, with no opportunities for education, having no recourse but to become housewives. You go back there every year and see them with more and more children; it was like a cycle of despair.”
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