Education, empowerment to break cycle of poverty

“Where there is no education we live in a house without a light: we are in darkness,” says Pandit Suresh Sugrim, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Arya Samaj Mandir Inc. Humanitarian Mission and founder of the New Jersey Aryan Samaj Mandir Inc., who, on August 9, 2015, officially opened a $38M (US$400,000) skills training centre and counselling facility in Guyana.

The Seva Sadna Home of Service at Area Q, Ankerville, Port Mourant, Corentyne in Berbice was made possible by the generous contributions of donors who saw the need for education to break the cycle of poverty that has engulfed communities in the region.

Speaking with Guyana Times Sunday Magazine, Pandit Sugrim shared his concerns for the region and the need for the facility.

Sugrim stated that the cycle of poverty can only be broken by educating and empowering persons, and by creating jobs for the less fortunate in the region.

“Education,” he stated, “is the key to unlock the door of poverty.”

He expressed his concern that people in Region Six, as well as other areas in Guyana, no longer seem to value education as a top priority. Instead parents appear to have let go of their responsibility toward their children in this regard.

Sugrim noted that there is a need to understand the value of education and what education can do for persons. “The only way to get out of the poverty cycle is to get ourselves and children educated,” he added.

He implored parents to look at their children’s future. “As parents we all have goals and ideas of what we would like our children’s future to be like. Education is how we take that step to ensuring they come out of poverty,” he insisted.

Berbice, he said, is a rural community with few jobs; those who have finished school are unemployed; young girls have turned to prostitution while young boys and teenagers turn to drugs and alcohol, which are ills constantly plaguing the community.

In addition, he said that domestic violence, suicide and lawlessness are invading the communities, and the question is how we take back our communities as NGOs, government agencies and other such organizations.

Programmes

Among the programmes that are free of cost the centre will offer are English and Maths for those who failed these subjects at CSEC as well as those who are about to write CSEC. There are also extra lessons for those writing the National Grade Six exams as well as others in the primary and secondary levels.

Sugrim said that the organization has discovered that many adults and youths never had the opportunity to go to school so don’t know how to read and how to write. As such, there is a lack of effective communication because of illiteracy. One of the more significant programmes therefore is teaching literacy.

Communication, résumé, letter writing and public speaking – some of the resources lacking in Berbice – are also being taught at the facility.

He called on other faith-based organisations to make an impact in the community by working together as a team because there are so many problems that one organization cannot handle everything by itself.

“As faith based organizations we all have a vision for our communities; it is important then that we join hands and shoulders together to take our community back,” Sugrim said.

Jobs and sustainability

“The organization is not looking for money but to touch lives and change lives in a very meaningful way,” Sugrim declared.

There are plans for cottage industries: teaching women to sew uniforms, bedsheets and pillowcases as well as mosquito nets to earn an income, for example.

Sugrim pointed out that there is no debt for the building, and very light maintenance – mainly water and electricity bills. Through the cottage industries, the bulk of money would go toward its recipients and the remaining for building maintenance.

He admitted that there has not been much help from local businesses, and the organization is still “struggling” to find local donors for furniture and computer items since American and Canadian donor funds went into the construction of the building.

Breakdown in society

According to Sugrim there is a “massive breakdown in society right now in the sense that there is no relationship or communication”: no dialog between husbands and wives, and children and parents – the reason for the many ills of society today.

He also blamed the “many social ills” found in Guyana and around the world, which have destroyed “the foundations of families at a national level”, for the current crisis that also includes domestic violence, abuse, rape, suicide, HIV, drugs, teenage pregnancy, high school dropout rates and lawlessness.

All these societal breakdowns, he stated, come as a result of the lack of education.

“I strongly believe that if you educate a man you educate an individual; if you educate a woman you educate a nation. As long as a woman is educated she will pass on those values to her children. Our mothers and our daughters and our sisters need to get themselves educated,” Sugrim stated.

Instead, he lamented, we are investing in the material things: the house; the cars – while moral values drift away and our children “fall through the crack.”

Making the change

“More than 100 students are already enlisted for the programmes and more keep coming in, looking for a way out of their poverty,” he revealed.

But, Sugrim noted, there are still many more persons willing to make a change but many experience hopelessness.

“Hopeless in the sense that we as Guyanese have become very selfish individuals and have surrounded only ourselves and our immediate surroundings,” he explained.

“Until we become the victim, only then do we understand somebody else’s pain. We no longer are our brothers’ and our sisters’ keepers; our neighbours’ keepers.”

He recalled the old African proverb: “It takes a whole village to raise a child” and implored residents of Berbice to utilise the facility as it is theirs. He also assured that no-one who is willing to make a change in their life would ever be turned away from the centre, regardless of their circumstances. (Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)