INGRID Goodman never had the opportunity to attend school as a child. She grew up with a grandmother who believed that once people were educated, they would leave Guyana and never return. She wanted to keep her grandchildren with her, having lost one of her own daughters in death and seeing two more move abroad.

“I had a travelling grandmother,” Goodman recounted during an interview with the Pepperpot Magazine. ‘Travelling’ in the sense that whenever they moved to a new village and people would find out that the children were not going to school, she would pack up the family once again and move to another location.

At the time, Goodman’s grandmother, Maude Weeks, now deceased, was caring for four grandchildren. “It was total fun. Her father was J.W. Weeks who owned the old soap factory on D’Urban Street. It was in my adult life I figured out she probably thought ‘[because of] this thing called education, I am going to be left alone.’”

Mrs Weeks somehow believed that education kept Guyanese out of Guyana. “When people migrated to get an education, they didn’t return to Guyana. So, she felt that the grandchildren she was left with, if she didn’t send them to school, they wouldn’t grow up and migrate. It wasn’t that we were poor; we were well kept. But because of this belief she had, whenever people questioned her about our schooling, she would up and move someplace else.”

As a result, Goodman and her cousins lived in many different places across Guyana including the East Coast Demerara, Corentyne and Vreed-en-Hoop.
But Goodman, for one, didn’t mind the moving. “I had a good time. Whatever village we went to; maybe we would stay three months, six months, up to a year. We weren’t limited. We went out and played, socialised. Even though the formal education wasn’t there, we were educated about our environment; ethics, values, all that was intact. And, our needs were met.”

Mrs Weeks’ plan didn’t exactly work out because the kids’ parents eventually made arrangements for them to move abroad to live with them. Goodman ended up in New York at age 16 and started going to school. “I learned to properly read and write when I was 19 years old.”

The travelling adult
But Goodman’s upbringing affected her life more than she realised. As an adult, she began a cycle of moving from one place to the next. “A lot of times, what we end up being in life is what we experienced in childhood,” she says.

She never liked New York, so she moved to Colorado with an aunt and stayed there for six years. “I then migrated to Zimbabwe and lived another few years there. I got restless and came back to California and started to pursue a first degree in Business. That took five years with a family in between. We moved to Botswana then came back to America and we had stopped and spent a year in England with relatives while my husband was working. Back to California, I started working and then decided to pursue a Master’s Degree in Social Work,” she said.

Goodman had been working in a homeless centre and often met social workers. She observed that their methods and ways of dealing with persons were less than impressive and thought the only way she could make a difference was to get involved in social work herself.

Goodman, by this time a mother of four, went to Florida to assist a relative with her mental health facility and eventually moved again to Grenada where she would spend the next five years.

Assignment Guyana
In 2009, she decided to make a trip to Guyana after more than 30 years to buy materials for a craft shop she had in Grenada. “What I saw in 48 hours I had not seen in my life! People were yelling, screaming at each other. I said to myself the creator prepared me for ‘assignment Guyana.’”

Goodman made a decision to return home and first started a programme of counselling so she could get a feel of what some of the issues were. “I started doing research. I had to learn how to be a Guyanese all over again.”

Goodman then started an advanced mental health course and started training with the Child Care and Protection Agency. In 2014, she said she saw the need to open a homeless shelter called Women’s Refuge Guyana located at Lot 28 Section ‘C’ Enterprise, East Coast Demerara (ECD).

“What I didn’t see in Guyana was a shelter that housed both the mother and children. I thought instead of separating the mother and child, let us have a programme to look at the root causes of abuse, neglect and abandonment while keeping the family together.”
The mission of this non-governmental organisation is, “To influence behavioural change through self-awareness from the impact of abuse, neglect and/or abandonment throughout Guyana.”

The organisation aims to break the cycle of second and third generation abuse of children by female single parents through education, training and sustainable employment by reducing the number of vulnerable children lingering in state institutions.
It caters for individual, family, couple and group therapy; school intervention; employer intervention; community intervention; suicide/homicide prevention; entrepreneurial skills training; small business management; professional development training; and advanced mental health training.

One of the biggest challenges, Goodman said, is lack of resources. “Food continues to be one of our biggest challenges. Food for the Poor was on board since we launched but we need more support.” She is also grateful for support from EPIC Guyana, Mattai Supermarket, West Field Prep School and Juice Power.

Goodman believes she has passed the stage of moving from one place to the next and hence has decided to settle in Guyana. As proof she is now settled, she referred to the fact that although her longest stay in a country was up to six years, it has now been nine years since she has remained in Guyana.