Lucia Cabrera Jones, head and co-founder of the Women-Owned Media and Education Network (Women), said she understood the influx of Venezuelans entering TT a few years ago was disruptive for the country, but it was necessary to look at the “root cause” and adapt.
“We have to understand these people are running and nobody runs from good. Nobody wants to leave the comfort of their home and go into the unknown where you don’t know if you will be welcomed.”
Getting people to understand and accept each other was just one of the reasons Jones and Women co-founder Jayme Hoyte started the NGO and continued to provide training for both migrants and locals.
Jones said she and Hoyte had been working with women separately, but decided to combine their expertise and passion to take their work to another level.
When they formed Women during the pandemic, the aim was empowerment, equity, to build the capacity of women so they became self-reliant, and other similar ideals.
They registered the NGO in 2022.
“But we decided it could not just be about the women without the input of men. We need them alongside us. So we need to sensitise the males with the struggles that women go through, we need to show them we really need them in a different capacity, we need them as support.”
Women’s latest programme was Flourish – Empowering Resilience and Integration, sponsored by the International Organisation for Migrants. It is an integration programme bringing together migrants and residents of local communities.
“The main objective is to promote integration at community levels. We are doing so through skill-building, having both migrants and locals learn and work together.”
Every Saturday from March 2-April 1, ten migrant females and ten local females, and five migrant males and five local males participate in the skill programmes in sewing and hydroponics. But there were also entrepreneurship and financial-literacy workshops, as well as integration and xenophobia workshops.
“We want to educate both populations as to what is xenophobia and break down the stigma. Some people make xenophobic statements and have xenophobic behaviour and they don’t even know, feeling like they are being nice to people. In this programme we try to teach people how to deal with it and break those barriers.”
[caption id="attachment_1072440" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Representatives of WOMEN, Lucia Cabrera Jones, right, and Jayme Hoyte at an event to promote entrepreneurs in La Horquetta. PHOTO BY Grevic Alvarado[/caption]
Jones said Women chose to host the programme in Enterprise, Chaguanas, as there was a heavy presence of migrants in central Trinidad. And, at the end of Flourish, a community day will be hosted in Longdenville, Chaguanas, on April 1, complete with games, vendors and live entertainment, including tassa and parang, all with the idea of promoting integration.
Jones, originally from Cuba, is a citizen of Grenada and has lived in TT since 2005.
She said when she arrived, she was not classified as a migrant in people’s
