Cuso: Volunteering Helps Guyanese-Canadian Keep Ties To Guyana
OCTOBER 11, 2017 – Cuso International – Guyana
In the mid 1960s, Patsy Russell was taught by a Cuso International volunteer. Now she is one. “I went to a convent school in Georgetown, and a Cuso volunteer, Gwenne Wardle, taught us games and gymnastics.”
Fifty years later, now a volunteer herself she can see how Cuso International’s model has changed. Not placed at a school, but with Guyana’s Small Business Bureau she is overseeing the establishment of two business incubators. Her goal is to continue the work she did on her previous placement with the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry which she left after a one-year placement in April.
Cuso: Celebrating Global Diaspora Week and the contribution of diaspora communities around Canada and the world.
GUYANA promotes agriculture; fends off protectionism charge in oil diversification — By Mohamed Hamaludin
“Oil “don’t spoil,” the late Dr. Eric Williams, prime minister of petroleum-rich Trinidad and Tobago, was reported to have once said. To which the late Forbes Burnham, then prime minister of agriculture-oriented Guyana, retorted, “But you can’t eat it.”
What happens when you have both oil and food? Lots of headache.
Tension between the two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations has existed for decades, even though Trinidad and Tobago once wrote off a US$400 million debt Guyana owed for petroleum products, according to former Guyana Parliament Speaker Ralph Ramkarran.
Many Guyanese traveled to other CARICOM countries to live and work in the 1970s and 1980s, “creating monumental chaos” during transit at Trinidad’s Piarco International Airport “with huge bundles packed with goods being brought back to Guyana for trading,” Ramkarran wrote in a Guyanese Online column.“ No single Guyanese passing through Trinidad during this era, and even much later, has not experienced surly, enhanced scrutiny and less than accommodating reception at Trinidad’s Immigration and Customs desks.” Continue reading →
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