Plans are on stream to have the more than 600 religious leaders, who were part of a special domestic violence training programme, partner with the Human Services Ministry in an organized manner to deal with the problem of domestic violence in communities.
Local coordinator Rev Kwame Gilbert and overseas-based facilitator Dr Cecil Mercurius have submitted some recommendations to Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon who is expected to raise these matters with Cabinet.
Gilbert told this newspaper said the recommendations include having persons trained be part of a community network that would work with the Ministry of Human Services. He said the proposal also includes having the religious leaders transforming their places of worship into safe zones and counselling centres for cases of domestic violence.
Gilbert said too that discussions are being held to have more training sessions with religious leaders where some of the 633 persons trained could impart what they have learned to others.
Currently, some of the persons trained are assisting with an educational exercise on the Sexual Offences Bill in areas along the Corentyne, Gilbert said, and others are to be engaged in other programmes being carried out by the Ministry of Human Services.
Meanwhile, some of the religious leaders that were part of the training programme have already begun to take the message back to their communities. Pastor Neil Chase of the North Ruimveldt Church of the Nazarene attended the recent training session said that the sessions were well-delivered and beneficial. Chase said the members of the church plan to take the message to the community, particularly as it relates to child protection.
He said he will be using his church’s weekly television programme to address domestic violence. In the new year, Chase said, he hopes to hold parenting classes in his community.
Speaking about the training programme, Chase said that while the sessions focused primarily on women and children, emphasis needed to be placed on empowering men as well. “Even if we empower women… these women come to the same unempowered men who are the fathers of their children, husbands who beat them etc,” he said.
According to him, very often the men are castigated for their failure to live up to their roles but said that these men ought to be shown how to fix themselves. “Don’t tell men to fix themselves, show them how to fix themselves,” he said. He said that similar initiatives offered to women, such as the Women of Worth (WOW) fund should be extended to certain men.
Meanwhile, Chase noted that in dealing with cases of domestic violence in the past, he has discovered that many abused persons, particularly women, stay in the abusive relationships because they have nowhere else to go. He said more facilities may need to be built because when a religious leader or another person may try to intervene in a domestic violence but there is no place to put the victims.
He said this particular lacuna has to be addressed if the administration is serious about having religious leaders play a more aggressive role in tackling domestic violence.
When this was raised with Rev Gilbert, he acknowledged that halfway houses needed to be built. According to him, government has been looking at this, and that plans are in place to establish one such facility in Region Six.
He said the government is also considering supporting institutions already set up by individuals, and he identified two facilities – one in Linden and another in New Amster-dam – that could qualify, even as some of the persons trained are already assisting the ministry.
At the formal opening of the training programme, Dr Mercurius said that if the government and religious leaders work together, cases of domestic violence could be reduced by 40 per cent in the country.
Abbass Mancey, a leader in the Baha’i community, told this newspaper previously that the training of religious leaders could be seen as an attempt to get “a national response” to the problem. Mancey, who is also the Coordinator of the Domestic Violence Policy Unit at the Ministry of Human Services, said it was important to have several persons in the community who could be called upon to offer assistance when issues of domestic violence arise. He said the success of the programme would depend on the sustainability of the initiative.
