What happens when you really care? Abbigale Loncke knows. Three years ago, her grandfather had to have his legs amputated due to complications from diabetes and she, along with other family members, tried to find assistance for him, but failed.
Loncke quickly discovered that finding affordable home care in Guyana was difficult, and harder still was finding people who were reliable and could operate on a flexible schedule.
“So we started looking and it was really expensive. The nurses who wanted to come wanted some really crazy prices just to do basic stuff and even though we all were working we found it hard to match our budget with what the nurses really wanted in terms of pay. And [because] they were working, they would come whenever they were available, so it wasn’t flexible enough for us,” she recalled.
Rather than complain about the problem however, she took matters into her own hands and drew on her own experience that she had garnered while living in the United Kingdom. That very year, the Essential Home Care Agency was born.
The agency offered everything she had needed for her grandfather—care for the elderly tailored to fit their budgets and caregivers that were on call 24/7.
A rift between her and the investor pertaining to the vision of the business led to Essential Care’s end last December, but that saw the beginning of Community Health Care.
Currently located in Georgetown, Community Health Care already has staff in Essequibo, Linden and Berbice. Of the 40-plus workers that are available, 15 of them are currently linked to clients. Nevertheless, plans for expansion are already in the pipelines, with Loncke already in talks to have Community Health Care taken to Grenada, Barbados and other islands in the Caribbean.
“The thing about it is that we provide the care based on the needs of the clients. So a lot of times people might think that they need somebody there all day or three days a week or whatever the case might be, but they don’t and so we factor in the needs and we factor in how much they’re able to pay… We are available 24 hours a day seven days a week. So even if your primary caregiver falls ill there’s always somebody there to look after you. There is always someone there to fill in,” Loncke said.
A key aspect of Loncke’s entrepreneurship venture is her target of single mothers for employment. She revealed that her goal in this is to create a strong support system for those women in their employer-employee relationships, with the hopes that this support system will spill over into their family lives.
Loncke noted with shock the number of applications she received from women within a month of starting up her business, adding that this was quite telling on the unemployment crisis in the country.
“Within like the first month I had about 70-something applications from women… If within a month of starting a company you’re getting about 70-something applications then you know something is definitely going wrong,” she said.
Community Health Care retained all the services offered by Essential Home Care Agency, but this time, was entirely funded by the young entrepreneur. It also adopted a not-for-profit aspect, with the profits made from clients being reinvested into staff training and support.
“The main thing that we do is the training of the women we have at our agency. We train… in the fields of healthcare, elderly care, child care and customer service and then we provide employment for them within our agency,” she stated.
Loncke, who studied at the University of Guyana before proceeding to the UK where she read for her degree in Psychology, explained that owning her own business and being involved with a network of other entrepreneurs taught her effective business management. As such, she is able to fund her venture through monies made from consultancy work she does with small companies such as Randy Madray, managing their brand.
Loncke’s journey took quite an unexpected turn when she gained a moment of fame after being recognized for her social work by President of the United States Barack Obama.
After successfully completing six weeks of business training abroad with the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative (YLAI), Loncke won a business pitch and gained the opportunity to visit Peru to meet the President.
Reliving the experience, the social entrepreneur recalled being seated in a secluded area out of President Obama’s view, and at that point worrying only about whether she would be able to pose a question to him during the Q&A segment.
She related how Obama had mentioned another youth during his speech, a Haitian doctor who does diagnostic work to help find cures for diseases in children. She described the young man’s shock at the recognition, explaining that she had been yelling at him to stand up. Ironically, when her name was mentioned, she, too, was catapulted into a state of disbelief.
“So when he called my name I didn’t know who he was talking about. And everybody was like, ‘yo is you! is you!’ you know? And then I stood up and I was like bewildered. I was looking around like, is he talking about me? The president of the United States of America, is he talking about me? That’s basically how I was. I tried to maintain my composure as much as I could and I tried to keep my excitement down to a minimum,” Loncke related.
“It was incredible to say the least. I believe in my company and I believe in what we do and I believe in the impact that we’re going to have on Guyana. It’s just now for me to gain the support of Guyanese and to gain the support of even government officials,” she went on.
“I would love… for government officials to even call me to say congratulations or job well done. Or I would have loved for them to say, come meet with us and let’s hear your plans…. It hasn’t happened as yet but I’m hoping that, you know, in the future someone from the government will call me and see how best we can push my company, push what we’re doing.”
She stated that she had approached the Ministry of Social Protection earlier this year to discuss a possible collaboration, but was told that homecare was not something the ministry was interested in pursuing at that time.
“My goal, my plan when I met with the minister was to ask for subsidized care so that those who can’t afford care [could] get care in their homes. Also, it’s creating employment. So it’s a win-win situation for the government, they’re creating employment and they’re caring for the elderly. That’s my initial proposal and I’m still hoping that at some point that proposal can still be on the table but I don’t know how and when….”
Minister of Social Protection Volda Lawrence announced last month at a ceremony held at the Umana Yana in commemoration of month of the elderly that the ministry would be implementing a programme to reduce the number of elderly persons in institutionalized care.
“We want to ensure that we have a generation who understands the importance of keeping our ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ in the home. And not to look towards institutions to place our elderly,” Lawrence stated at the time.
