Caribbean Voice partners with church, drum school to spread Mother’s Day cheer

Sunday marked Mother’s Day and The Caribbean Voice (TCV), in collaboration with the church and youth groups from the community of Buxton, brought cheer to a number of the village’s elderly matriarchs.

Reverend Desrey Watts of the Saint Matthias Church, was on hand on Sunday as the group of volunteers travelled throughout Buxton in search of the elderly to deliver hampers and other assorted goodies to them. She explained that the programme was launched in keeping with the church’s 30th anniversary.
“All these years we [would] invite the elderly at the home or wherever we are doing a programme, like August 1st programme, we do a programme with them. But instead of just feeding them like that, the children would dance and do different things to entertain them. So we continued doing it all the years and as time goes by I started to think about other things to do.”
“So it’s usually an entire programme for the whole village, like the feeding programme on 1st August. Or Diwali or Phagwah time. But this year we decided to start this programme. When it comes to our distribution, we have decided with the church that we’re going to do [it] every year, for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.”
Meanwhile, TCV Managing Director Bibi Ahmad explained that her organisation is not only collaborating with the Saint Matthias Church, but also with the Buxton Fusion School of Music and the Youth Empowerment and Faith Group in order to carry out the exercise.
“Wherever we can make a difference, we go,” she explained. “We not just about suicide prevention, or bringing awareness about abuse. We also partner to do humanitarian work, we have the distribution of pampers, wheelchairs, walkers and walking sticks.”
“Primarily the activities were coordinated by the reverend and I collaborated with her, to supply things to give to elderly mothers. These mothers [we are visiting] are more or less the real elderly mothers, such as the shut-ins,” Ahmad added.
It is understood that a total of 12 Buxtonian matriarchs were visited by the organisation. Among them were Evadney Talbot, who celebrated her 107th birthday on Friday to much fanfare, Ruby Blair, an 84-year-old senior citizen, Ms Huntley, 98 years old and Ms Francis, 95 years old.
The Caribbean Voice, a Non-Governmental Organisation, has more often been associated with its work on suicide prevention and its partnership with other bodies, including the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) last year.
Last year, it conducted a community mental health workshop at Yakusari, Black Bush Polder, and two students’ workshops at a high needs high school at Ash Youth Developers Education Learning Institute, Vigilance, ECD.