‘Women at the Helm’ shift focus

Instead of allocating the funds reeled in from the Women at the Helm charity concert staged recently by Sandals Royal Caribbean, to help fund a shelter for the Montego Bay Crisis Centre, the organisers have decided to use the funds to buffet the salaries of counsellors at the shelter.

The 40% rise in domestic abuse against women and children in the second city tugs along increased challenges for the financially strapped crisis centre and has forced the organisers of the charity event to shift focus somewhat.

“With this increase, it has become necessary for the counsellors at the facility to work even longer hours on their already rudimentary budget,” says Sandals Royal’s general manager, Carl Hendriks. “We have decided to use the funds to remunerate the hard-working facilitators without whom the crisis centre is non-existent,” he clarifies.

While the resort seeks another way to fund the well-needed shelter, an avenue in which victims may alleviate their abusive circumstances will be presented in the form of job opportunities on a part-time basis in various departments at Sandals Royal. Coordinator of the outreach facility, Elise Thomas, says most of the women who are in abusive relationships are often unemployed and feel their vulnerability justifies their crises.

Thomas notes that the main counsellor at the centre works without pay for several months at a time. She reveals that despite the general lack of support from “corporate Montego Bay”, the dedicated team members at the institution continue to lend their time, money and in some cases, their homes, to women and children who often cannot find other alternatives.

Women at the Helm, held annually at the Fairfield Theatre, has the opposite experience: at least where performer support is concerned. The event has as its lifeblood three of Jamaica’s top entertainers. “Singer, songwriter, Susan Couch, the angelic Della Manley and story-telling marvel, Amina Blackwood-Meeks have all been “incredibly dedicated to the success of the event,” declares Hendriks. He shares that Susan and Peter Couch had no choice but to take along their teenaged daughter to Montego Bay for the show, as they could not identify a nanny for her at the time.

In a preamble to her signature smooth performance, Della Manley told the half-full theatre that her schedule was packed preparing her daughter for GSAT exams when Sandals Royal contacted her to do the show. A story about the molestation of a girl her child’s age compelled her. “When I heard the horror story of an 11 year-old girl, who was to also sit the exams but had to seek refuge at the Crisis Centre, I wondered what I was whining about,” she says.

Although patronage of the humanitarian event has been ambivalent since its inception in 1999, Amina Blackwood-Meeks, the story-teller is confident that the charity show holds the potential for greater success in the future.