ARCHERY Guyana continues to make strides in the international arena, this time through its Secretary-General Vidushi Persaud-McKinnon, who was appointed Chair of the World Archery Americas (WAA) inaugural five-member Committee to deal with gender-equity matters in our continent.
The creation of this committee is an important step towards enhancing equal involvement of both genders in all archery-related areas.

Its members will coordinate with World Archery’s homonymous committee and Pan Am Sports’ Women in Sports Committee. The Committee is comprised of Persaud-McKinnon (Chair), Barbara Hernandez (DOM), Natalia Londoño (COL) Maria Andrea Mejicanos (GUA) and Cesar Otarola (CHI).
Speaking with Persaud-McKinnon on her appointment, she said: “I’m very honoured, this is a big honour personally and for Guyana in the whole. It’s really going to put us on the map.
Persons have known about Guyana and it’s exciting to see what we have and what we can change and what we can transform.
“I have been very passionate about gender-equity issues, so this is exciting to hear the best practices from other countries on what we can do and what we can develop and put in place not just for us, but for the entire continent.”

The ecstatic Chair also disclosed that the committee convened its inaugural meeting on January 12, 2021 which she pointed out was very successful.
Touching lightly on a few important topics they reviewed during the meeting, she stated: “Well gender-equity is part of what we looked at today because we said we need to reach out to all the National Archery bodies and do a statistics percentage to see how many women are in control; how many women take part in events; how many women medal, how many women are prize-winners and then we need to evaluate, why?.”
“We also don’t want to just pull numbers and say something should have half men and half women, because that’s sexist in itself. You should not just hold a position because you are a woman, you must have the skillset and you must qualify for it and that goes with everything.”