$35M carbon credit grant: Aishalton to establish daycare centre, will provide jobs for single mothers

The Amerindian village of Aishalton, located in South Rupununi, Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo) will invest a portion of its $35 million carbon credit grant to establish a daycare centre that will provide jobs for single mothers within the community.

This was revealed by Toshao of Aishalton, Michael Thomas, who stated during a telephone interview with this publication on Monday that the project is expected to be executed by November after the village acquires the second tranche of money from the grant.
“It will be from November or as soon as we finish the first set of projects, presently we are doing five projects with the $12.5 million, and as soon as we are able to expend [that] money, we’re going to a second request for funding and then we will have the daycare centre set up. By that time, we will have already identified the single parents and where…we will seek training opportunities from.”
According to Thomas, they will train single mothers in the areas of daycare and healthcare services so they can efficiently work in the daycare centre. He added that the funds generated from the daycare will be used to pay a stipend to the single mothers operating the facility.

“One of the things we are pushing through right now is to have a daycare centre which is under what we call social upliftment. This daycare centre will be the first in the district of Region Nine, where we are targeting single mothers. We will be training single mothers in daycare services or healthcare services…before they are employed at the daycare centre. Our plan is to have them on shift base, every month maybe. We will be targeting those workers like teachers, health workers, office workers, and those who are able to pay a monthly fee for the services that will be provided at the daycare centre. The funds that are generated will be used…to pay a stipend to these single mothers,” Thomas explained.
He added that they are hoping to have the daycare operate on a monthly shift system.

Farming assistance
The community was given its first tranche of $12.5 million from the grant which will be used to help farmers within the community to get planting materials and equipment upon their request.

Thomas told this publication that they recently held a meeting with farmers who were given the chance to request specific things they need for their farms.
“We already received a cheque to the value of $12.5 million and what we are doing presently is assisting farmers with support. We have over 40 households [that] we were able to help plough a large amount of savannah and we are assisting them with whatever support they need [whether it be], fencing, planting materials [or] farming equipment, whatever they may need assistance with. We already had one meeting where they were given the chance to tell us what assistance they need really. We are working on that and by this weekend we will be distributing to them…based on the request they would have made,” the Toshao explained.

Expanding Aishalton’s tourism product
Aishalton is also looking to expand its tourism products by offering pottery and hammock weaving training. Thomas informed that the village is currently working with the Guyana Tourism Authority (GTA) and Visit Rupununi to develop a tourism package.
“One of the things under culture and tradition that we are bringing up back is pottery which we will use as a tourism product, and hammock weaving. We will have the training programme being done right here in the village by our own people who are knowledgeable of hammock weaving. So those are part of our tourism project that we have already initiated with Visit Rupununi and the Guyana Tourism Authority,” Thomas explained.
He shared that as of right now, the only tourism products the village has to offer are petroglyphs. Thomas added that through funding from the Amerindian Affairs Ministry, the village will build an information centre for tourism as well as use some of the funds to protect its historical infrastructure.
“We only have the Aishalton petroglyphs. That is the only product we have presently. We don’t have an organised package as yet but that is what we are presently organising.”
“We are presently executing a project with the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs (MOAA) under culture where we received some funding to build an information centre for tourism and to protect and preserve the petroglyphs that we have because over the years we have noticed that it is continuously being defaced by our own people…our younger generation who would normally go there on a weekend without supervision. So, they would just write on those rocks and change up the paintings that we have there,” Thomas added.
Aishalton has a population of approximately 12,000 people. The Toshao shared that a committee of five persons was established to monitor and oversee all of the projects which will be executed under the funding through the grant.

$4.7B distribution
In February this year, a total of 241 Amerindian communities across the country each received grants ranging from $10M to $35 million. This initiative followed the historic agreement signed with Hess Corporation for Guyana’s carbon credits in 2022, which will see the country earning US$750 million for its forest. A total of $4.7 billion (US$22.5 million), which represents 15 per cent of Hess’s payment for Guyana’s carbon credits, was disbursed in the various communities.
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo explained that a strict mechanism would be followed to ensure accountability and transparency regarding how the funds would be expended. Each community is required to create a separate bank account so the spending of the funds could be properly monitored.
Moreover, the community cannot utilise the funds until a finance committee is named and the village development plan is completed and endorsed by the village.
Jagdeo had expressed that the plans should be focused on either empowerment projects in the social sector, job creation, and/or on food security efforts.