Today dawned
bright and beautiful at JJ’s Paradise hotel in lovely St. Lucia. The day held a
special air of excitement as all the Global Volunteers looked forward to our
first REAL day of work, with our Anse La Raye partners.
Anticipation
mounted as we quickly dispensed with breakfast and received our transportation
assignments: preschool, infant school, and primary school teams in the first
van; no make that secondary school and earth box teams in the first van and
health education in the second; no, roving care givers, preschool and secondary
school- well, you get the picture, and once again our fearless leaders, Bud and
Warren provided us a good laugh at their expense.
Several of us
took the opportunity while waiting for a van to return and hailed a water taxi
across our pristine bay to change money at the Marigot Bank, can life be any
more fun??
Then we were
all off to our volunteer work assignments.
Country leaders and judge Kathy plus Steve, Joann and I met with Lucy
Lubrin-Gerard, director of the roving care program which is run by the Ministry
of Education Program Preschool Services of St. Lucia. Lucy is a strong, capable administrator with a
heart of gold. She is a commanding
presence in the Anse La Raye community as evidenced by her ability to simply
step into the street of the village and call to two loudly swearing women,
“Darlings, Darlings, Darlings, you must not do that”. The fighting ended and each went her own way
mumbling.
Lucy recounts statistics of negative influences on families, like reciting a grocery
list: 22 % unemployment, no money for families to pay for preschool, recent
passage of VAT of 15% Value Added Tax on all services, when none existed
before. Domestic Violence, lack of social networks, incest, alcohol and cocaine
abuse, high HIV rate, and more. Yet she remains optimistic, she is deeply appreciative
of and committed to Global Volunteers for its role in supporting her
programs. She strongly advocates for her
paraprofessional roving caregivers who are dedicated to serving their moms and
babies even though they themselves only earn a stipend barely enough for them
to survive on. Always focused on the
Mom’s personal lives, she embraces the Global Volunteers-inspired “spa day”, and
encourages us to do it again.
After our
indoctrination by Lucy and our lunch which we shared with Lucy, Joann and I were
pared with our individual care givers.
Joann went roving with Abna to two homes. Channelle and I went to two homes, the first
in which the Mom was not at home, the second was a five-month old boy and his
mom (for confidentiality purposes, we will not discuss the specifics of the
family situation in this report).
There was
open acceptance by the mothers to allow us as Global Volunteers to play with
their babies. During our visit we noted
the childs’ developmental stage, the mother’s interaction with the baby, the
home environment and especially the genuine love the care givers expressed
toward the babies. Channelle sang,
played with puppets, and entertained the baby while easing him into my arms,
while I joined in and completed her song.
Just as easily she moved the infant to his mother and indicated that the
silent reserved mother pick up the tune and finish by singing to her son and
finally placing a book in the mother’s hands.
About 35 minutes after we arrived with Mom reading to her son, Channelle
and I sang a good-bye song and backed out the door, waving to a smiling baby
and Mom.
This is one
example in the monumental task of bringing change to one community to one Mom
and one baby at a time. Lucy tells us
that she and her three caregivers are serving 46 families at this time. That is 12-15 for each roving caregiver, two
to three times a week. Clearly, Global Volunteers' continued involvement is
central to this effort.
-Carol
