– The First Lady, a tech pro, and a humanitarian discuss empowering people and communities
By Neil Marks

One woman wanted a pregnant cow so she could start selling milk and then raise more cows to supplement the income her husband would get from his on and off job at the sugar estate.
Another woman wanted a sewing machine, and yet another wanted her yard fenced so she could start a kitchen garden to support her family.
Sandra Shivdat did her rounds, asking family and friends for contributions, so she could get what the three women, and many others, needed.
But there was a bargain involved: The women would get what they needed if they kept their children in school. That was in 2005 when Mrs Shivdat returned to Guyana for just about the fourth time since she migrated in 1983.
She had heard of the unprecedented level of rainfall which flooded and devastated the country’s coastland – the tiny strip along the Atlantic coast where most people live and where most economic activity is concentrated.

Sandra wanted to help and arrived in February, when the waters had receded, and headed straight to her hometown of Lusignan, East Coast Demerara, to see what help she could give. An aunt told her that the people in the neighbouring village of Good Hope could do with some help. She developed a form – where she would write down names and addresses and the needs of people- and headed out.
With her brother, she visited 25 homes and pledged to provide their immediate needs, food and water being the most important, and told them she would return to help them further. Back in the U.S., she wrote 25 letters to the families she had visited, but got only five replies. There could be any amount of reasons why the others didn’t write back, but then one reason hit home: Perhaps they just didn’t know how to. It was an entirely plausible reasoning; she knew that many of the women could not read or write and their children were not going to school.
On her next trip back here, she set about determining what she could do. By that time, she was expanding her network, adding more friends and family to the list of persons who were willing to offer donations. And so, the cow and the sewing machine were bought, and the other woman’s yard was also fenced.

Using her own money and that of others who contributed, the families she initially contacted were still being provided with food items, and the children had everything they needed to stay in school – including uniform, bags and books.
On every visit, there was always a need to fill. The Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) Food for the Poor was working in the area as well, but would only build houses for those who had legal documents showing ownership of the lands they were on. The families were allocated lands by the Ministry of Housing, but they could not afford to pay. Mrs Shivdat was able to gather enough money to pay for the land for five families so they could benefit from the houses being built by Food for the Poor.
Initially, every time Mrs Shivdat would return home (now making four trips a year), she would check the children’s schoolbooks and report cards, to see how they were doing, and to see if indeed the children were going to school. It wasn’t on just a few occasions that she had cause to reprimand the parents when she noticed a high level of absenteeism.
In some cases, she found that the mothers were taking the children out of school so they could work and provide for the family. So Mrs Shivdat decided that she needed to do something else. There are many ways to get out of poverty and she thought that education had to be one of the best ways to do so.

She decided to register the Lusignan–Good Hope Learning Centre as a charity in the U.S. so she could provide further help. She asked the then government for a piece of land to build a centre, which would cater for the needs of out of school youths and those in school who needed remedial classes, particularly in reading.
She didn’t get the plot where she wanted nor at the price she wanted. She was sold a plot in the “high income” area of Lusignan, paying US$2, 500. The Centre opened its doors in 2009. Out of school youths are taught during the day and those in school are taught reading after school.

The mission was a simple one for Mrs Shivdat, “fighting poverty through education,” and she walked from house to house, trying to convince the parents to send their children to the centre. But once the Centre was opened, it wasn’t just teaching the children to read. They came with a “basket of problems” including abuse, and in some cases, direct opposition to schooling by some fathers.
In one case, Mrs Shivdat met a 13 – year – old girl who was taken out of school. The father wouldn’t let her go to school, because he figured it was only a few more years before she would be married off. She convinced the father that he wouldn’t have any additional expenses if he let the girl go back to school. The father agreed, and the girl was enrolled at a private school, with all her expenses taken care of by the Centre. But the father would become irritated at nights when the lights were kept on as she studied, so the girl, determined to study, would go to her grandmother’s house. Her mother and grandmother were both supportive of her schooling.

The girl wrote the CXC exams usually taken by those leaving secondary school, and she was successful. She now works as a receptionist at a hotel, and was recently married, with plans to attend the University of Guyana.
Mrs Shivdat has faced a litany of problems as she runs the Centre. She has even been threatened with a cutlass by one father whose child was attending the Centre. It was the work of the Centre and the great lengths it goes to in order to help the underprivileged and vulnerable that captivated First Lady Sandra Granger and her husband, President David Granger – two years before they had those titles, that is.
Last December, Mr Granger fulfilled a promise to help the Centre and presented a cheque for $2 million.
“I am very happy with the results that have been coming out of this Learning Centre year after year… as far as I am concerned, this Learning Centre is helping you to help yourself,” the President said then.

“It’s more than just a Centre for children. It’s a safe space in the community,” said the First Lady, in an interview she shared with Mrs Shivdat, who immediately recalled a moment when she had to literally lock two children in the centre to save them from an abusive father who came to get them in a fit of rage.
“She is not only dealing with kids and their illiteracy but what impacts on their lives – the kind of environment (they live in), the challenges they face,” the First Lady said of Mrs Shivdat.
She added: “Sandra and Freddie (Mr Shivdat) (are)… social workers in the community.
“I was there when people would come to them with their difficulties, bringing the children with their problems. They were actively engaged to take children out of danger.”
The First Lady was blown away by the “marvellous” work of the Centre.

As mentioned at the outset, the Centre has sought to help the women of the community empower themselves and help their families.
“…for me, everything has to happen in a holistic manner. You can’t just throw a plaster on one sore and expect the body to heal. And when I see something like that (what the Learning Centre has been doing to help, not just children, but their parents, especially mothers) I am captured,” the First Lady stated.
As a result, the First Lady has been actively helping the Centre. Once there is an activity, she would call up the Centre to see if the mothers in the area would like to get involved. And so, when there was a training programme on how to care for the elderly, the women of the area signed up and will soon receive training in First Aid.
The idea was that the women could use the training, with their certificates, to find employment; it should be noted that for some of the women, it would be the first time they are having something called a “certificate” with their name written on it to find employment as caregivers.

“We teach women to earn enough money, to be independent, to recognise that they can do things for themselves and when they do that, all the statistics in the world say, if a woman advances economically, the entire family advances with her,” the First Lady said.
Thus, the First Lady’s goal to empower women through her “Self-reliance and Success in Business” workshops has benefited the women of the Lusignan Good-Hope learning Centre.
And there are many other ways the First Lady has sought to help the Centre. This week, that interest resulted in the children of the Centre benefitting from sessions in 4 Lego Mindstorm Robotics programming.
That happened because the First Lady had learnt of the three Guyanese siblings from Georgia who were making the headlines in every major U.S. news network for creating a mobile app to help document Police brutality in the United States. She engaged their mother, Karen Abrams, in a discussion of how they could help Guyana and the idea of summer camps in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) came up.
Time passed, and the First Lady wrote Mrs Abrams to ask for an “update.”
“Karen kind of excited me when she came up with this idea, because I immediately thought of the many children who are illiterate…but a computer and robotics do not rely on knowing A-Z – it relies on how your mind works and that is the excitement for me,” the First Lady related, with Karen Abrams next to her side in the same interview shared with Mrs Shivdat.
She said education doesn’t have to take place in a formal classroom and that the kids many dismissed as “the throw away kids” can be “caught by this idea that they can figure out something.”
When she got the First Lady’s email, Mrs Abrams got down to work, raising funds mainly through online platforms, such as Facebook and GoFundMe, and local sponsors. In all, some US$10, 000 was raised to hold a series of camps in Guyana, including the Lusignan Centre.

Mrs Abrams said 17 robots were bought, and it is intended that all of them would be leased so that there could be a continuation of the programme through various STEM clubs across the country.
“…you have kids who feel they are in a dead-end street; there are adults who feel that way too…(but) you can just give them a glimpse of what is possible,” said the First Lady.
Mrs Abrams said she would like to see a lot more Guyanese children exposed to technology, “to give them the opportunity to say I like it or don’t like it.”
She noted that because of the robust technology drive in Estonia, three of their nationals, together with a Swede and Dane created Skype, which was bought by Microsoft in 2011 for US$8.5 billion.
“If we have one kid who creates something amazing, that would be awesomeness,” Mrs Abrams said, noting that results may not come “today, but maybe in 10-15 years.”
“We are really looking to spread a vison to inspire and to create opportunities,” she stated.
Mrs Shivdat adds about the work she is doing: “Our goal is to empower women, young girls, to know that they can stand up and make a life for themselves; there are ways and education is one of those ways.”

The First Lady said she will continue to help centres like that run by Mrs Shivdat and initiatives such as those of Mrs Abrams, because, at the end of the day, all the efforts are intended to empower people and communities.