Increasingly, stories that derive from journalistic ‘intrusions’ into the lives of Guyanese women, some of them shockingly young when account is taken of the extent of the responsibilities that they already bear, serve to remind that much of what gets said by officialdom on the subject of gender and opportunity amounts to no more than ‘old hat.’ The gap between drive and ambition of young Guyanese women and the opportunities to realise those ambitions has to be filled by concrete and relevant action, not hot air.
The circumstances of 18-year-old Khandi Griffith mirror that truism. No slouch academically, her formal education, nonetheless, would appear to have been put ‘on hold’, whilst she navigates her way towards an early glimpse of an independent adult life.
Khandi’s secondary school education began at the New Amsterdam Secondary school. Out of those years came the reward of seven (7) subjects at the CSEC examination, her grades reflecting overall, a more than creditable performance. Afterwards she proceeded to St Joseph High School with the particular mission of pursuing CAPE studies.
It would appear, however, that Khandi’s evident academic prowess was, all along, doing little to rein in her creative preferences. From around her Grade Nine year in secondary school she developed a passionate interest in graphic design and proceeded to hone her skills by enthusiastically entertaining requests from classmates to undertake various graphic design assignments for them including adding her creative touch to the covers for the dissertations associated with their CXC School Based Assignments (SBA).
It was the encouragement of her classmates that led her to her earliest excursion into graphic art as a commercial pursuit. Alpha Creations, a home-based pursuit began, she says, with a laptop computer, a printer, and “lots of enthusiasm.”
‘Graduation’ from the status of a high school girl to a young woman with responsibilities, drove home various realities to Khandi. An absence of meaningful investment in the acquisition of many of the tools associated with graphic artistry placed limits on what she could accomplish. Beyond that, in the absence of formal credentials (qualifications) in the discipline, she often encountered challenges in seeking to persuade clients that she could match their expectations.
This, arguably, is where the system failed her. If she appears to hold no resentment over the fact that her youth and inexperience might have caused potential clients to be skeptical about the extent of her ability to ‘deliver,’ she was discovering for the first time in her young adult life that there was a decided dichotomy between the familiar official rhetoric about the desirability of gender equality in terms of access to opportunity, and the reality of all that just being a mouthful of ‘political marbles’.
Particularly galling and disappointing, the 18-year-old recalls, were those opportunities which she thought had arisen from approaches that had been made to her by two entities in the public and private sectors, respectively, expressing a business interest in her graphic art services. However, once she could not provide the two institutions with what they considered to be adequate portfolios, they quickly ‘shut her down’. Other potential clients, she believes, quickly lost interest when her fresh-faced youth did not, it seemed, fit with their perception of a seasoned graphic artist.
She acknowledges that all of her ‘training’ in the discipline derives from television programmes, YouTube instructional videos, and long of hours of practical application.
Arising out of her own experiences, Khandi makes no secret of the fact that matching talent and opportunity has to be one of the priorities of both the state sector and the business community if real openings are to be found for young women to have an opportunity to ‘shine’. She makes a case, too, for far more opportunities than are available at this time for small businesses managed by young women to secure the various types of support that can better position their business pursuits to grow and to prosper. These, she says, should include a set quota of both state and private sector-allocated contracts.
Khandi’s entrepreneurial instincts have pushed her in the direction of diversification. Alpha Creations is the outlet that she has created for the marketing of costume jewelry.
Ever mindful of the focus of prospective clients on academic achievements, Khandi is seeking to pursue academic studies in Graphic Art. The University of Guyana does not offer courses in that discipline. That is another hurdle that remains to be crossed.
Alpha Creations was beginning to benefit from a growing market for costume jewellery when the COVID-19 pandemic made its disruptive appearance.
Shifts in the range of businesses that have emerged in Guyana in relatively recent years have created a modest but pleasing market for her skills as a graphic artist. Pursuits such as fish fries, barbecues, street limes, birthday parties, and other celebratory occasions have expanded the graphic art market without demanding of the artists the kinds of formal credentials which the mainstream market appears to require. It is, Khandi says, the ability to deliver the goods that counts. Up until relatively recently she had become pleasingly busy undertaking small jobs in this ‘godsend’ graphic art niche.
Her jewellery business has come to a near grinding halt. She is using the hiatus to consolidate her existing client base. Khandi estimates, meanwhile, that Alpha Creations, has lost around sixty per cent of its market. Social distancing prohibitions have smashed its way through the plethora of public events that had given rise to a significantly enhanced demand for her skills as a graphic artist. The market for fliers, posters, invitations, and the like, has shrunk dramatically.
To a limited extent, Khandi’s business pursuits have benefitted from the phenomenon of the simultaneous opening and closing of doors. It seems, she says, that changing demands for goods and services resulting from the advent of COVID-19 are opening up opportunities for new types of business ventures. For the month of October she has successfully concluded six ‘contracts’ for graphic design undertakings afforded her by emerging small businesses.
Pressured by the necessity to earn enough to meet her needs, however, Khandi has had to resort to the option of seeking a regular ‘nine to five’. If nothing has ‘popped up’ as yet, this energetic 18 year-old says that she is not likely to turn as deaf air to such suitable offers as may come her way. While nothing, it seems, will distract her from her substantive interests, decisions these days, are a matter of necessity being the mother of decision-making.
Khandi’s creative aptitude does not stop at her passion for graphic art. Her ‘second love’ is music. She currently serves as a part-time music teacher at In Sync Music School which operates from the Malteenoes Sports Club on Woolford Avenue in Georgetown. There, she provides both keyboard and voice training lessons. Two weeks ago, this talented teenager teamed up with two colleagues to release a song titled ‘Glory’, which she says, is intended to ‘speak to’ the challenge of combatting racism.
Khandi Griffith can be contacted on telephone number 616-5922
