Sylvia Jaglal displays some of the drapery work to Stelios Christopoulos, Minister-Counsellor and Charge d’ Affaires of the local arm of the European Union.

BY ASHA JAVEED

In a small, white temple in Gopee Trace, Penal, 15 women meet every Monday evening from 1 to 4 to learn about drapery.

They are all housewives.

They range in ages from 24-54.

Their schoolroom has wooden tables, long benches and a small blackboard.

It is situated at the back of the Gopal Krishna Mandir, a community point for residents.

Streams of light filter into the room except from the open door and small ventilation holes close to the roof. A fan in the middle of the room rotates during class.

They share three sewing machines.

Their goal is the same: to be given an opportunity to get some work.

Learning drapery is just one step in empowering the women of rural Penal/Debe. The end result is to make them more marketable or even launch micro-entrepreneurs.

Thus far, some of them have gotton work.

The programme is run by Sylvia Jaglal, a “master” of swags, cascades and the mathematics (there is a lot of maths here!) needed to make curtains.

Jaglal has graduated about 35 students since the programme began.

It received funding from the Regional Miro Project Fund (RMPF), sponsored by the European Union and administered by the Ministry of Social Development.

The progamme got support because of the “many unemployed people—single mothers, school dropouts, broken families and low income households. People lack skills that would enable them to obtain and sustain employment and do not have the means to equip themselvs with the skill to do so.”

It’s had a degree of success.

Most of the women used their own money to buy machines to sew drapes for themselves. Some have already received orders to make curtains.

Jaglal, who’s sewn drapes as her only means of income, explained she may soon consider going to the cloth stores to pitch her products.

Nearby, the Transfer Women’s Enhancement Project, as the women label themselves, has embarked on a similar project to provide 20 young female school dropouts, unemployed, unskilled single parents crochet and macrame to make them more marketable.

The regional social and human development council of Penal/Debe area approved the funding.

Co-ordinator Joyce Bisnath said the success of her project hinged on four young boys who were taught to make fishing nets during their July-August vacation period.

She believes in the programme.

It has gone beyond equipping rural women with skills to become community inclusive: it’s a different method to help reduce poverty.

Transfer Village has changed with the closure of Caroni (1975) Ltd.

Some men who were once canefarmers are now construction workers.

Others are employed in the Ministry of Works.

The women agree that getting jobs mean moving out of the community to city areas like San Fernando or even Port-of-Spain.

“There is little incentive to stay here. Young people who want to make it have to leave and go to the busier areas to get work,” said Etwaria Ramlochan, 54.

Eradicating poverty

The two rural communities in Penal face similar challenges:

n the demise of the sugar industry have put a farming community in limbo, and it has had to integrate itself with other industries.

n the lack of skills mean employment options are narrowed

n the rural/urban drift to employment and an improved quality of life have meant little attention is given to rural areas to improve

Empowering women

infrastructure and access. Inevitably, this puts a strain on the delivery of services to higher populated areas and other symptoms like traffic congestion.

n enabling women with skills as a means of empowerment (most importantly, through cultural barriers) and an opportunity to seek work.

The European Union commissioned the Survey of Living Conditions (SLC), which was released two months ago, pointed that the poor represented 12.5 per cent of the population of the Penal/Debe Regional Corporation.

The RMPF is designed to put together projects on a micro level to help transform poverty. All the regional corporations have access to it.

The report noted that at least 16.7 per cent of the population lived in poverty as of 2005. A look at T&T’s economy paints a different picture:

n low inflation

n economic growth

n almost full employment

Antonia Popplewell, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Social Development, said the Government was not comfortable with the level of poverty given that T&T having the highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita rating among developing nations.

Defining poverty

“Poverty may have fallen in T&T. However, it is the investment in the capacity of the poor and the vulnerable, in particular, and the population at large that will save the country from poverty when the revenues from oil and gas decline or reserves are exhausted,” the SLC noted.

If poverty exists in T&T, in what form does it exist?

Stelios Christopoulos, Minister-Counsellor and Charge d’ Affaires of the local arm of the European Union, said his working definition of poverty was not having enough means to cope with your needs.

That definition has been modified some.

“Poverty is a state of mind because it is about capacity which is a perception you have of yourself, of others, and your possibility to think things. Unless you have this capacity to think things through, whatever money I give you, several months down the road, you will be poor again. This is a definition I am following: I believe poverty is not having the capacity to cope with your needs.”

It’s a point constantly voiced by economist Ralph Henry of Kairi Consultants.

“The thirst for knowledge and information has to drive individuals to commit to life-long learning and to seek training and educational advancement less in terms of the substance of knowledge acquisition for application and for the generation of new products and services,” the SLC noted.

Christopoulos said the poverty alleviation programme was proposed eight years ago, but the country had undergone significant bouts of economic growth which have changed the landscape.

“I am not so sure that we would be willing to assist the country today with a similar project because when we did that, it was something like eight years ago and T&T had not received the growth and development that it has today. But, still, I can see the project is useful even today.”

The survey’s credibility have been criticised because of the lag time in conducting the survey, releasing the data and the sample size used.

Christopoulos, who assumed his job in April, said a project like this helps to empower people.

“Poverty alleviation projects are not really about handing out money and grants. It is really about empowerment. In that respect, it was very relevant then, but I believe that it is still relevant now.”

Similar projects have been conducted in Guyana and Haiti but yielded different results. T&T is among the most successful, he believed.

Reflecting on T&T, he said the gap between the haves and the have-nots has not shrunk. Conversly, it is still in the increasing side.

He said he did not know how well targeted the projects were since the management unit was housed and interacted with the Ministry of Social Development.

“My answer is that I hope it was very relevant and it addressed poverty in all of the areas indicated in the poverty alleviation.”

He expressed confidence about the state of the projects and how it has changed people’s lives.

“I saw something which is actually happening and that is very gratifying. This is what it is about.”

Not all of the initiatives undertaken will survive, though. The five-year poverty alleviation project ends next year.

The Ministry of Social Development, under new minister Dr Amery Browne, will look to decentralise successful projects.

“The Ministry of Social Development has intentions to take over and use some of the structure projects for its further development of the decentralisation of social sevices.

“Some projects will even peform better than that and they will manage to create small- and medium-sized enterprises out of them and, that for me, is a huge success. Some of them will even manage to create a number of employment situations, especially in these poor regions,” Christopoulos said.

Poverty is not having the capacity to cope with your needs.