Growing up, the home of young Maxine Parris in Buxton was always filled as her parents’ benevolence stretched far and wide. From a young age she always knew she wanted to help people, so while she studied veterinary medicine and worked as a vet it is her work with women agro-processors that has been the most fulfilling.
“Although I am a veterinarian by profession, I like working with people and so when I was asked to do work with women I could relate… because apart from the actual work in agro-processing I would be able to share some of their anxieties as a woman, some of their challenges because I would have faced some of those challenges myself,” she told the Sunday Stabroek.
Her contribution towards agriculture and food safety and specifically working with women agro-processors saw her being awarded the Golden Arrow of Achievement.
“For the last ten or so years I have worked with women in agriculture, especially the agro-processors and I think the work with them would have been some of my proudest achievements… I think there is recognition with respect to that,” she said.
As to how she feels about receiving the honour Dr Parris-Aaron had this to say, “Overwhelmed, humbled, I think each person, if they are honest, likes to be recognised in a positive way and so when I got the call it was really a proud moment for me.”
She has worked with the Inter-American Institute for Corporation and Agriculture (IICA) as the Agriculture Health and Food Safety Specialist for the past 22 years in different areas, but mostly general agriculture; and as a veterinarian she contributed with respect to agricultural health doing things like emergency preparedness plans not only for Guyana but for the Caribbean.
It was in 2012 that she started to work with a project that looked at improving income generation for agro-processors and for the most part women who were doing agro-processing in Guyana. She partnered with what was then Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) but is now CUSO, specifically with consultant Pam Jardine.
“The idea was to try not only to improve income generation but also to put the products on the market locally and internationally,” she said.
For the past few years that is where she concentrated her time and energy, but she also assisted with an abattoir in Grenada and that work continues this year.
Dr Parris-Aaron said it is easier to work with women because she sees they have a lot of skills but also it is their commitment to what they do that has brought immense joy to her work. The aspects of making their product more marketable and presentable has been fulfilling also.
Over the years she has worked with more than 500 women across Guyana and explaining her work she noted that when she met some of the women, they were in groups which were not necessarily organsied. She and Jardine worked to put the women in more formalised registered groups and also did a lot of skill-training to ensure the products they put on the market are safe for consumption. They also facilitated them being trained by other people in record keeping, the dynamics of being in a group and conflict resolution, among others.
At present, she is assisting in getting support services such as the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) to go and have talks with the groups. The work also entailed assisting some of the women to travel to other countries to be part of exhibitions and also in national exhibitions in an effort to have their products placed on the local and international markets.
The work has seen an increase in the women’s income generation and in the marketing of their products with the help of agencies such as the New Guyana Marketing Corporation and companies such as Sterling Products.
‘Nurtured to care’
Working with women came naturally for Dr Parris-Aaron as she related, she came from a family – she is the eldest of seven children – where they were “nurtured to care.”
“I have grown up seeing my parents just care about people so we would have had relatives and strangers live with us, group up with us,” she said.
It was her parents who taught her to care for people and “so it kind of came naturally as I grew up wanting to care for people.
“Even my siblings, wherever they are in the world, they do just do that. They are mentors, one runs a food bank… we are just cultured to care,” she added.
When she became employed with IICA she said, there were lots of opportunities to help people and when the partnership came up it happened that she and Jardine were school mates and after the two talked she felt it was “just something that I wanted to do.”
She noted that at times women are taken for granted in many areas and even though you may be a professional woman there are a lot of cases people think there is a limit to what you can achieve. And talking to the women she assisted, she found out that even though they had skills, and some completed high school, people would place them in a box.
“It was as if they could only achieve this and when they face a bank, for example, to get a loan they had challenges. When they went to seek help from some agencies people were like, ‘you are just processing some stuff,’” she noted.
Asked specifically about some of the challenges she would have faced, the awardee said that in employment there were instances where she was offered the post of an assistant instead of the main position even though she was qualified.
Women found they had easier access to loans if they were married. According to her, “…it wasn’t that they couldn’t show security it just that they didn’t have a husband that could sign.”
As a result, the Women Agro-Processing Network with assistance from IICA and the Rural Enterprise and Agriculture Programme has set up a revolving fund where women can access loans of up to $300,000.
Human medicine or agriculture
Talking about her journey to becoming a veterinarian, Dr Parris-Aaron said that she had a choice of doing either human medicine or agriculture.
“I thought if I did human medicine I would probably freak out if a patient died. I said to myself I just can’t stand having somebody die and I thought I should try something that would probably not freak me out as much,” she said.
Off she went to the Guyana School of Agriculture at the age of 17, where she read for the diploma. She then worked for a while before being awarded a scholarship to study overseas.
It was during a conversation with her father, Malcolm Parris, that it was suggested that she study veterinary medicine.
She is more attached to the part of veterinary medicine that looks at the total health picture of people and it involves their association with animals and the environment. She explained that she is attached to this aspect because it comes back to dealing with people.
“I found that growing up if I was left on my own, I would have probably chosen something to deal with social work. Again, that would have been because of how I was cultured at home, to care,” she added.
If she had done social work, she would have preferred to work in the area dealing specifically with young people.
She found a way to work with young people, as during her two daughters’ school years, she counselled some of their friends but more importantly she became foster parent to some of them.
“Some of them actually lived with me… because their parents lived out of town and they were going to school in town and needed somewhere to stay. But there were others who were there because they were released from the New Opportunity Corps and didn’t have anywhere to go,” she explained.
The latter group had relatives who signed for them when they were released but they were left on their own and taken to Dr Parris-Aaron by others.
Over the years, she has nurtured about 55 young people for from two weeks to about four years and those years brought her closest to realizing some of her teenage dreams of being a social worker.
Veterinary medicine
And so even though she did agriculture and veterinary medicine she was attracted to food safety which came back to people.
However, for a number of years she did work with the Ministry of Agriculture as a veterinarian, doing clinics on the East Bank and the East Coast and being responsible for animal health.
“So I did do a lot of work in veterinary medicine and a lot of what I do takes into account general veterinary medicine,” she said adding that she did a Masters in Tropical Veterinary Medicine which deals more with the kind of tropical diseases that affect animals and some of them can affect humans.
At one time she also had a private veterinary clinic.
But it has not always been agriculture, agro-processing or veterinary medicine for this awardee as she revealed that she played netball in high school and always loved the sport. So, in 2002 with some encouragement, she became a part of the Netball Association and served as its president for three years.
She became associated with the Caribbean Netball Association as its first vice-president, but she did not seek re-election two years ago because she just had so much to do. She has also been associated with basketball and was the secretary of that association for a number of years.
“I would say all in all I have lived a full life, doing a lot of the things that I like to do and a lot of the things I felt for one reason or the other that I was maybe born to be involved in because they feel so natural and so comforting,” a satisfied Dr Parris-Aaron said.
She described herself as a “servant” because “first and foremost I feel as if I was born to serve. I am also a humble person… and I think I am complex… [because] there are so many facets to my life.”
One wall in her office is almost filled with the various programmes she has studied and been involved in over the years and while they could have propelled her into something else in another country, Parris-Aaron said working in Guyana is where she feels most comfortable even though she loves to travel.
Her two daughters work in Canada where they started their studies and will continue same in the near future.
This awardee’s wish is for Guyanese to see service as the centre of whatever they do as there was a time in Guyana when everybody looked out for their neighbour’s children.
“Now there are things happening to people’s children right next door and nobody cares… I think we really need to get back to where service matters where we can just help each other to grow. For me that is really number one,” she said.
