About Us
The Voice of the Caribbean at Home and Abroad
Our Mission
The overall objective of The Caribbean Voice is to serve the Caribbean world, however and wherever necessary and possible, employing a Zero Suicide & Abuse Approach towards building Suicide and Abuse Freer Communities across the Caribbean.
Advocacy & Lobbying
Research & Awareness
Training & Mentoring
Counseling
Stakeholders' Collaboration
The Caribbean Voice (TCV) is an NGO with 75+ membership from across the Caribbean and Diaspora, engaged in mental health advocacy and activism with a special focus on suicide and abuse (child, gender based, sexual, substance, animal) prevention in the Caribbean.
TCV is a fully volunteer driven entity and thus all who embrace our mission and goals understand and operate as volunteers. All our services are free. Our motto is 'Saving Lives, Empowering People' and we operate on the conviction that Five Minutes of Your Time Can Save a Life.
Background
The Caribbean Voice (TCV) was registered as an NGO in 1994 in New York State. Over the years TCV has:
- published a magazine and a newspaper of the same name, The Caribbean Voice, (the only global Caribbean publications and the only ones that were engaged in investigative journalism in the Diaspora),
- organized The Caribbean Heritage Awards and The Caribbean Voice Business Awards, (both international in nature and neither ever reproduced by anyone elsewhere),
- published an online global Caribbean news site,
- participated in fund raising for hurricane victims in the Caribbean,
- provided free tourism promotion to hurricane ravaged Caribbean nations,
- organized an essay contest for New York City school students,
- provided a range of pro bono services to other Caribbean Diaspora organizations,
- participated in conferences in the US and the Caribbean, as well as trade shows, food festivals, music festivals, press familiarization trips.
The Caribbean Voice was a leading provider and consultant for all things Caribbean in the Diaspora. Its research and articles were/are being used as primary material by colleges, researchers and marketing companies and it was/is listed as among the leading Caribbean Diaspora entities in a number of prestigious publications.
Concerned about the high rate of suicide in Guyana and among Guyanese in the Diaspora, a group of Guyanese Diasporans launched The Suicide Epidemic Facebook group in June 2014. The discussions that ensued led to a suicide prevention program, which was quickly expanded to include abuse (sexual, domestic, child and substance and later on animal and environmental) instituted by The Caribbean Voice, initially in Guyana and subsequently regionally and in the Caribbean Diaspora especially in North America.
Our many activities and initiatives include:
- Online workshops, webinars and panel discussions
- Face to face symposium and workshops
- Training in mental health and psychosocial support as well as various mental health related issues such as DV and suicide prevention
- Conferences
- Research and info dissemination via social and traditional media
- Publishing the Global Caribbean Magazine
- Counselling
- Outreaches, networking and collaboration building
- Advocacy and lobbying
- Candlelight vigils
- Various campaigns and special projects
- Fund raising to support our work
Status
The Caribbean Voice (TCV) is an NGO with 75+ membership from across the Caribbean and Diaspora, engaged in mental health advocacy and activism with a special focus on suicide and abuse (child, gender based, sexual, substance, animal) prevention in the Caribbean.
Registered as a not-for-profit (non-profit) in the US and in Guyana, TCV works with partners in other Caribbean nations and in the Diaspora. Our motto is 'Saving Lives, Empowering People' and we operate on the conviction that Five Minutes of Your Time Can Save a Life.
Also, TCV is a self-funded (we raise our funds ourselves) entity with no overheads or paid staff and thus every cent raised goes directly towards our work, which is ongoing throughout the year.
As well, all our services are free.
Core Values
Inclusiveness
The Caribbean Voice (TCV) is built on an embrace of the total diversity of the Caribbean world – nationality, ethnicity, culture, religion, gender, age…
Volunteerism
TCV is a fully volunteer driven entity and thus all who embrace our mission and goals understand and operate as volunteers. As well we seize every opportunity to encourage and foster volunteerism, within and without the organization.
Transparency
All that we do is open to anyone and everyone. The public is always aware of the work of TCV, every which way and our use of the media (traditional and social) ensures the dissemination of information about our activities, goals, mission, plans et al.
Accountability
Accountability underpins our modus operandi. Thus, the leadership keeps the membership informed always via constant communication and meetings; donors and supporters know exactly how their support and resources are employed and what are the results; collaborators are fully cognizant of the scope and details of the collaboration and those we serve are au fait with every facet of this service.
Integrity
Integrity frameworks the entire existence of TCV and is a trait demanded of all members. Thus, TCV members are always expected to be honest, trustworthy, truthful and possessing of a moral compass that includes caring compassion, kindness and an embedded desire to make a difference.
Membership
The Caribbean Voice is a tax exempt, not for profit, fully volunteer driven NGO, currently registered in the US and Guyana. Our membership is drawn from throughout the Caribbean and the Diaspora, to wit the UK, Canada and the United States. Membership is open and voluntary and there is no membership fee.
The organization is run by a management committee drawn from among members. A magazine committee handles every aspect of the magazine. Diaspora team members help and support every which way, while various country specific teams plan in association with the executive and implement the plans as they relate to each nation.
A Board of Directors of eminent individuals from both the Caribbean and North America provides oversight and guidance to the organization. The technical team comprises highly credentialed and experienced, clinically trained psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers who provide our pro bono counseling service.
Our team of spokespersons comprises media and entertainment personnel from North America and the Caribbean who provide creatives for our advocacy and information dissemination campaigns, assist with networking in the media and entertainment world, plan and execute our fund raisers and help to plan and host our various media programs and publicity endeavors.
Objectives
The overall objective of The Caribbean Voice is to serve the Caribbean world, however and wherever necessary and possible. With respect to our current mental health activism and advocacy work our specific mission is to employ a Zero Suicide & Abuse Approach towards building Suicide and Abuse (domestic, sexual, child and substance) Freer Communities across the Caribbean: This is to being achieved via five pillars of operation:
- Advocacy & Lobbying
- Research, Information Dissemination and Awareness Building
- Training and mentoring
- Counseling
- Fostering Stakeholders' Collaboration
Organizational Capacity
Social activism is not a discrete endeavor that can be easily measured and evaluated. And interpersonal violence activism is even less discrete. However we have built into our workshops a series of mechanisms that enable data collection and analysis: questionnaires, Q&A, group work, various interactivity, and various feedback.
All data, discrete and otherwise is analyzed both in order to get a sense of where participants are coming from as well to evaluate the workshops for understanding et al. We strongly believe that unless participants can explain what is communicated then neither has communication taken place nor has understanding taken place.
We use the data and its analysis to also constantly modify content and presentation and we do possess a number of individuals with the capacity (skills, experience) to engage in the analysis. As well continuous training of our volunteers ensures it is data driven. As well we engage in ongoing communication with individual workshop participants (most of whom come to us of their own volition) who provide empirical and anecdotal data that also is used to drive training and modify presentation and content.
Furthermore we engage in follow up as each workshop identifies persons with needs, mostly counseling arising out various manifestations of abuse and suicide fallout. And for us this is the culmination of it all – finding abused and suicidal victims and providing them with counseling and other types of assistance including various referrals. In fact of the 400 plus cases we've handled we have never lost a single individual. There have also been many more cases that came to us of which some persons do not see the counseling through, some refuse counseling (because of a taboo that says to accept counseling means that one is a 'mad' person) and some after requesting the counseling back out for whatever reasons.
In terms of actual positive impact on interpersonal violence it must be pointed out that TCV is only one of many actors on the landscape so that its impossible to use our work as the sole yardstick to monitor and evaluate. We do know, however, that our intervention on the landscape helped to bring a lot of the issues front and center, that suicide has certainly reduced somewhat, that abuse (all forms) are receiving more focus, especially from government, that there are more NGOs and activists on the ground, that the media has taken up the cudgels in big way, that legally and policy wise more is being done and that gradually the silence is being fractured. In all of this TCV has played a part.
But no NGO, especially a voluntary one, possesses adequate resources, time and knowledge to collect and analyze data. We would love to have a full time set of personnel to help in this process along with office space and equipment: a couple of counselors, a few individuals trained in data collection to work in outreach, a pollster, one or more vehicles, laptop computers, projectors and screens with relevant tools, funding to maintain and maximally make use of all of this and personnel to staff offices.
Training
Recognizing that training is the lifeblood of activism especially relating to abuse and suicide in particular and anti-violence in general, The Caribbean Voice has ensured that every aspect of work is underpinned by professionals, and by ongoing training. For example, our team of clinical counselors drawn from Guyana, the US and the UK have, at the minimum, a Masters in Psychology and more than a decade of clinical experience. While we do have members with a Bachelors in Counseling, with counseling training per se and with social work training, they do not engage in clinical therapy intervention.
We also have members with varied skills – medical personnel who help to connect mental health with physical health, mental health experts who provide technical guidance, media personnel who help with research and writing, entertainers, who are spokespersons and help with planning and executing fund raisers, a pollster, social media experts and so on – all of whom contribute to the totality of our work.
Our training output includes workshops, panel discussions, symposiums, zoom to FB broadcasts, webinars, podcasts, and a YouTube channel.
Guyana • Trinidad & Tobago • Jamaica • Barbados • Bermuda • St. Lucia • St. Vincent & the Grenadines • USA • Canada