THE Rose Hall Town police outpost is the first to benefit from a donation through the Spotlight Initiative project in East Berbice-Corentyne, on Friday last, in the form of a first aid kit, stoves, mattress, cleaning detergents, stationery, fans, a sink, and a solar light and six chairs.
The Spotlight Initiative is a global, multi-year partnership between the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls. At a simple handing-over ceremony at the St Francis Community Developers (SFCD) office in Port Mourant, officers attached to the outpost collected the much-needed items from the President of the SFCD, Alex Foster.

Speaking briefly to this publication, Foster stated that the items were donated after the organisation recognised some of their collaborating partners lacked the resources to execute the mandate of the project, which targets the reduction and, ultimately, eliminates any form of violence against women and girls.
The SFCD, in collaboration with the United Brick Layers, are tasked with delivering six pillars of the project; pillars three and four are focused in East Berbice. Foster explained that these two pillars deal with behavioral changes, providing counseling and psycho-social support and any form of intervention to help those affected.
Foster noted that the organisation aims to provide a one-stop shop for victims of abuse, but the challenge lies in stakeholders not having the necessary resources to make this a reality, hence the donation to the Rose Hall police outpost.

“In our experience, in trying to bring the stakeholders together, we found that some of them don’t have the ability or capacity to offer the psycho-social support, they just stick to what they are doing. For example, the police would charge and lock up who they need to and they are done, but people need other forms of intervention, so we are helping them to provide those interventions at the police station until the person gets to other sources or come to us where we have the unique ability to call probation, call health, call education, call everybody and hook them up so they do not have to go to 13 places repeating the same problem,” Foster lamented.

He further added, “And what we are doing gradually is, when we go in the field and identify the victims, we are linking them to access services from our different collaborating partners. For example, we may link them to the Food for the Poor houses; so it’s an ongoing process and as the process go on, we are developing and responding to same.”
In the latter part of December 2020, the SFCD collaborated with the UN and its partners – the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the United Nations International Children Fund (UNICEF) – to launch the Spotlight Initiative in Berbice.
The G$10 million project will run for four months.