A US-based couple here to facilitate consultations focusing on women’s issues met President Bharrat Jagdeo on Tuesday at the Office of the President to discuss the project aimed at empowering persons to deal with their problems.
Bishop Louis Jones said, “We are not here to reinvent the wheel, we are here to complement what is being done… it is said that ‘it’s not what bad people [do] but when good people [do] nothing,” according to a Govern-ment Information Agency (GINA) press release. The Bishop and his wife Sandra Jones are hosting the consultations.
The conference, which will span Berbice, Demerara and Bartica and other areas, is to address domestic violence and abuse. Bishop Jones told GINA that the conferences will be free of cost and will start in October.
He said plans are in train to establish a crisis intervention programme to allow persons an arena to talk about their problems. “We want to really empower women and children, also speaking to men about the ills people would talk about,” Bishop Jones said. The Florida-based Guyanese couple sees this project as a way of giving back to the country of their birth. “We will be going in the community, making awareness and letting them know that there is hope and help out there,” Sandra Jones said.
Although they are both Christians, the programme will also be targeting women from different religious backgrounds.
Recently, the Ministry of Human Services established the Men’s Affairs Bureau, which is a special unit aimed at helping men to realise their potential as fathers, husbands, parents and role models. It uses the pattern at the Women’s Affairs Bureau, which was established in 1981 to promote empowerment through welfare and general counselling and training in small business management.
