THE driving force behind the success of the Guyana Relief Council (GRC) is an indomitable, albeit a very caring woman, who was challenged by then President Cheddi Jagan approximately 16 years ago to form the organisation in efforts to provide assistance to vulnerable and helpless people hit by natural and man-made disasters.
This was at a junction when Guyana’s socio-economic infrastructure was in disarray and chaos and the newly-elected government had a demolished country to run, with every community needing urgent injection of funds in rehabilitative/developmental exercises, but without having the requisite funds and with a crippling debt burden.
So the late Dr. Jagan delegated persons, some for a dollar a year and some on a voluntary basis, to create synergetic configurations whereby they could juxtapose volunteerism and private initiatives with the government’s newly-emerging developmental policies in efforts to render urgent assistance to persons, families and communities with immediate needs in instances where their very survival was threatened.
Mrs. Yvonne Hinds, wife of Guyana’s Prime Minister, who wears many hats, multi-tasking extremely effectively and efficiently, took up the baton and with a nucleus body of men and women, with many others over the years joining the volunteer train that takes the GRC in service to disempowered and devastated persons, families and communities in all ten regions of Guyana, has created a dynamic that has transformed a fledgling volunteer organisation into a formidable machinery that is gaining momentum.
Mrs. Janet Jagan initiated and achieved many firsts in Guyana, through many difficult circumstances and virgin terrain, and achieved the pinnacle in her years of a superlative career in public life; but her journey was a collaborative process partnered by her redoubtable husband, the iconic Dr. Jagan.
At the GRC’s annual luncheon and Dutch Auction, held yesterday in the Savannah Suite of the Pegasus Hotel Guyana, Mrs. Hinds divulged that, when all other efforts failed, she resorted to “pillow talk” with the gentleman who has admitted to remaining besotted with his wife decades after he first met and fell in love with her.
Dr. Jagan and Prime Minister Samuel Hinds shared many things in common, not least their absolute respect and caring for all humanity, especially women and children; so their storybook romances and the support they have given their wives to achieve sometimes the seemingly unachievable, should be the yardstick for the way all husbands interact and interrelate with their wives because only good things will be achieved through such partnerships. Being and building each other’s strengths are bridges to building strong families, communities, and nations.
The two first families of Guyana have proven this and the GRC is an embodiment of what can achieved by women whose husbands support rather than impede their efforts, endeavours, and achievements.
Kudos to Prime Minister Hinds and Mrs. Hinds for another landmark in the brief history of the GRC, because while it was the leadership of the latter that sustained the unrelenting efforts to achieve the success of the organisation, it was PM Hinds who facilitated that success with his support and patronage of his wife’s efforts.
With such a partnership (and continued ‘pillow talk’) the GRC will certainly prevail over all extant and future challenges.