Women and gender equality activist, Magda Lois Muriel Pollard, died on Wednesday night at the age of 88.
Her nephew, Andrew Pollard, confirmed her death to Stabroek News and said that she had been experiencing failing health in recent years.
“My aunt Magda Pollard had a very full life, she was very passionately involved in the things she believed in and wanted to do,” he told this newspaper last evening, also pointing out that many would remember her for giving “wholeheartedly of herself.”
She was passionate about gender equality, and according to Andrew, that was one of her favourite issues. He recalls her being one of the first advocates to measure women’s contributions in the home and on a societal basis, as a metric for inclusion in tools like the national budget.
“She was a great booster for saying, ‘anything a man can do a woman can do better’”, he fondly recalled.
Magda Pollard was born in Buxton to parents who were both school teachers, but with her father’s advancement in the Department of Education, it was convenient for the family to move to George-town. The Pollards’ home then became 241 Bourda Street, where Magda Pollard lived until shortly before her death, when failing health did not allow her to reside alone any longer.
Ms. Pollard was also very involved in the Girl Guides of Guyana from the time she was at the Bishops’ High School, and she was also very involved in the affairs of that school as well, both at the time she was a student and then after graduating.
Her qualifications were in nutrition and health science, which she studied at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, and graduated from in the early 1960s. She returned to Guyana, and was offered a position as principal of the then just founded Carnegie School of Home Economics.
Her nephew said she saw the appointment as another opportunity to provide young women in Guyana with skills that would make then independent and self-sustaining and allow them to be earners and producers in their own rights, for themselves and their families.
“She was very successful at this level, and Carnegie as an institution under her leadership went from strength to strength,” Andrew said.
He gave one example of her leadership as the book ‘What’s cooking in Guyana’, which was produced by the school under her guidance.
In 1980, she was offered the newly created position of Women’s Officer in charge of the Desk for Women’s Affairs at the CARICOM Secretariat in George-town. She served in the capacity until her retirement. In this capacity, according to her nephew, she was very prominent in promoting women’s affairs and issues throughout the CARICOM region. She served with distinction, resulting in her receiving several awards from CARICOM and the wider community.
She was also passionate about music, and having had a gifted singing voice, she and several likeminded persons formed the Woodside Choir, of which she remained a member until her death.
In a 2012 interview with the Guyana Review, which is published in the Stabroek News, Magda Pollard was asked whether there were areas of development in Guyana to which she still had something to give, to which she answered:
“I am already committed and have been so through my years of teaching Home Economics and serving as Principal of the Carnegie School of Home Economics from 1957 to 1978. Too few persons, even educators, recognize its full significance in improving quality of life – engaging the sciences as well as nurturing the culture of the nation. Between 1980 and 1991 I also served as Women’s Affairs Officer at the Caribbean Community Secretariat. A lot of my work in that position had to do with the removal of all forms of discrimination against women. That is a struggle that is still being waged.”
Over the years she has received the CARICOM Triennial Award, the CARIFESTA Award for Women, two national awards— the Cacique Crown of Honour and the Golden Arrowhead of Achievement—as well as the special award of the Caribbean Association of Home Econo-mists, of which she was a founding member.
Magda Pollard is survived by her brother Brynmor Pollard, her niece Catherine and nephews Andrew, Eon and Michael.
Over the years she made lifelong friends in the persons of retired Caribbean Court of Justice judge and former Chancellor of Guyana, Justice Desiree Bernard; the late former first lady, Viola Burnham; the late Christobel Hughes; Evadne Thompson, a prominent banker in Guyana and Barbados; O’ Donna Allsopp; and Lynette Cunha, an organist and one of her friends, right up to her death.
