Rebounding from what she described as a “painful” experience, Carolyn Paul made a quantum leap in her professional life from banking to working with the vulnerable and helping to empower others; the mother of two believes she is right where she was destined to be.
“It was painful at first, but in retrospect I believe that pushed me into my purpose,” she told Stabroek Weekend. Paul was speaking about an experience that saw her exiled from the banking sector, where she had spent 11 years. She said she made it with support from of many, inclusive of her husband, Hekeima Paul, relatives and friends.
Paul was among six Republic Bank employees who were dismissed in 2007 following the disappearance of $8 million from an ATM even though no evidence implicated them. The five women and one man had vehemently protested their treatment by the bank and the police and alleged that their rights were violated during the process.
Paul was a senior ABM/Treasury custodian at the bank when she unceremoniously booted out of the sector she had excitedly entered at the age of 18, just out of school.
“After that whole ordeal… I have always had a passion for helping people for as long as I could remember. I started teaching Sunday School at about 18 years old and that kind of helped me to see the whole aspect of what people have been facing, visiting homes and so on and then I worked with an NGO for six years dealing with people living with HIV…,” Paul said about her eventual move to obtain a diploma and a degree in social work.
Those interactions and more helped Paul to realize that social work was her passion and today as career coach at Qualfon — a position which was renamed from chaplain, which it was felt connotes Christianity — she has no regrets. Paul spent six months at the Georgetown Football Association on an HIV project and at the Guyana Citizen’s Initiatives (GCI) where she said she got the got the push to enrol at the University of Guyana as the people she worked with inspired her to go after that dream. GCI looked at providing clean water for communities and from there she went over to Lifeline Counselling Services in 2010. She spent six years there, and she began working at Qualfon in 2016.
As care coach she provides counselling as well spiritual guidance, and she was quick to point out that it is not restricted to Christians only as she would seek the services of an Imam or Pandit to assist people of the Muslim or Hindu faiths.
The company has branches in other countries and a care coach is provided at all of them. According to Paul, it entails making rounds throughout the day and engaging with employees. At times, the employees cannot speak because they are taking calls and Paul said she is not there to interfere with their work.
“I would engage supervisors to find out how their teams are going if there is any support needed because you know sometimes they might be having a rough time in terms of production…,” she said.
There is daily prayer time, and everyone is free to join as it is voluntary and while before it was held in the chapel, because of COVID-19 it is now being held online. During that time, anyone from any religion is allowed to pray if they so desire.
Paul is available for one and one sessions and she is on call 24/7. Prior to COVID-19, she also made hospital visits to staff members and their immediate families as the company is cognizant that whatever affects employees at home would also affect their work performance.
Paul believes a position like hers is needed in other companies since many employees go to work with their problems and people would just dismiss it without knowing what they are really facing, and some people may have no one to talk to.
And she is also mindful of balancing her professional life with the other aspects of her life as she is the mother of two teenaged sons, so she has her family to take care of as well as responsibilities at church.
“So sometimes I can’t take every case. Sometimes I have to refer persons. There are times when I refer persons to the mental health unit. I can’t diagnose persons, but I can see the symptoms for depression and other illnesses, and I refer to them to the mental health unit… When it is too much for me I would refer and I would advise them why I am referring,” she said. But at the end of the day it is left up to the individual to take up the referral.
Really enjoying it
Paul said that she is really enjoying the new career path she has taken. When she observes someone moving from a state of hopelessness to going out and chasing their dreams, “that is what brings satisfaction, more than anything else…”
Asked about working in the public sector as a social worker, Paul said that is a question she is frequently asked and while she has considered it, her major concern is the workload. She said she has colleagues who work in the public sector and because of the workload they are sometimes burned out. She does not think there are systems in place to deal with those instances.
“I love working with children but because of that I have held back a lot…,” she said as she called for more to be done for those children, especially in the area of psychological support.
For her, the following through and ensuring that one’s work is making an impact is very important and she shared that even when employees leave the company she would stay in contact with them to find out if they are attending their sessions and just to keep in contact.
As the Sunday School superintendent at her church, Paul is the bridge between parents and children and the teachers. With the COVID-19 pandemic, families are having many challenges and she has to be in contact with those families, often via telephone, as she tries to provide support. She works with the teenagers at her church, and she constantly reminds them of how special they are as often, they are looking at their failures and that is what they use to define themselves.
Paul said since the pandemic she has seen an increase in the number of children who have gone missing. She said very often someone is in her Facebook inbox asking her to share information on a missing child; one of them was as young as 11 years old.
“I am worried as to what is happening in the homes. I mean persons are asking what is happening with those girls, but I am saying what is happening in the homes that would cause those children to want to leave. I mean our homes should be a place where when everything else is going wrong outside our children should want to run back in there to find that safe place, that security,” she said.
She called on parents to start examining themselves and also community members to come together and help to protect children.
“I feel we are really failing in some ways as a community,” she stressed as she added that boys also should be in the picture as they suffer as well.
For Paul, the journey is not over. She plans to pursue her master’s degree in the near future and she also wants to do more in her community, Wortmanville. She said she has lived there for over 20 years and there are a lot of things she is concerned about in that community as well as the surrounding ones.
“That would be my goal moving forward, to engage our teens, our families within the community. I believe wherever God has placed [me] is for a reason, not just to occupy space but to make a change. And I don’t believe to just sit and criticize but it is what I can do to make a change…,” she said.
She hopes to collaborate with others to help teens and families as she wants to stop certain cycles in the communities.
