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Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Sister Ruth Montrichard’s 50-year

commitment–Building a better Beetham

by

Ryan Bachoo
135 days ago
20241006

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

When it comes to the strug­gles and so­lu­tions of East Port-of-Spain, few can speak with au­thor­i­ty quite like Sis­ter Ruth Mon­trichard. The re­li­gious sis­ter at­tached to the Sis­ters of St Joseph of Cluny has spent 50 years work­ing with the Ser­vice Vol­un­teered for All (SER­VOL) Beetham Life Cen­tre.

She has seen the strug­gles of that so­ci­ety, the stag­nan­cy of some who live there, but al­so the suc­cess sto­ries that have emerged over the last five decades.

She start­ed as a mere train­er for ear­ly child­hood teach­ers, main­ly work­ing part-time at SER­VOL in the af­ter­noon as she was a full-time teacher her­self at Nel­son Street Girls’ RC.

One of her first jobs was to set up a small li­brary on Dun­can Street where the chil­dren of East Dry Riv­er, Laven­tille, Beetham, and Sea Lots who did not have elec­tric­i­ty or lacked parental guid­ance could vis­it af­ter school and get help with their home­work.

Mon­trichard’s work with SER­VOL would on­ly deep­en. She start­ed work­ing with the young women in Laven­tille, form­ing a women’s train­ing course us­ing the Methodist Hall as their base. When the chil­dren who at­tend­ed SER­VOL left the build­ing at 3:30 pm, Mon­trichard would teach the young women how to cook, sew, child­care, and hand­i­craft.

Some of the young ladies would go on to work in sewing shops and at the Hilton Trinidad ho­tel as cooks.

SER­VOL born out of strug­gle

Trav­el­ling along the Beetham High­way, it’s dif­fi­cult to miss the dark red build­ing with the sign ‘SER­VOL LIFE CEN­TRE.’

“I was there when the first brick was laid,” Mon­trichard told the WE mag­a­zine. Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, SER­VOL was born out of the chal­lenges of the coun­try’s Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion of 1970, in which sev­er­al peo­ple and groups sought to chal­lenge racial in­equal­i­ty and force so­cial, eco­nom­ic, and po­lit­i­cal change. But Mon­trichard said it was a lot more than that.

“It was af­ter those ri­ots that Fa­ther Ger­ard Pan­tin went up in­to Laven­tille and asked the peo­ple how we could help, and they chased him away, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment and the CIA sent him,” Mon­trichard re­called.

It was the great West In­dies fast-bowler, Rev­erend Sir Wes Hall, work­ing at the time with West In­di­an To­bac­co, who ac­com­pa­nied Fa­ther Pan­tin up the Laven­tille hills.

“Fa­ther Pan­tin put him in front, and he was walk­ing be­hind,” Mon­trichard fond­ly re­mem­bered. The res­i­dents lis­tened to what Hall had to say, and grad­u­al­ly they be­gan talk­ing to Fa­ther Pan­tin.

“Be­fore that, when he at­tend­ed meet­ings, peo­ple would just stand up and watch him in si­lence,” Mon­trichard re­called.

Build­ing a bet­ter Beetham

De­spite fund­ing prob­lems, Fa­ther Pan­tin and his team, which in­clud­ed Mon­trichard, would forge ahead with build­ing the SER­VOL Life Cen­tre. It would re­dound to the ben­e­fit of the most vul­ner­a­ble in East Port-of-Spain.

Work­ing with the Beetham com­mu­ni­ty, it was the res­i­dents who ad­vised Fa­ther Pan­tin and his team what was need­ed for the SER­VOL Life Cen­tre. The same res­i­dents would help them mix ce­ment and lay the blocks for the build­ing that stands to­day.

“They sort of owned the cen­tre in a way. They pro­tect­ed the cen­tre. They knew it was for the good of their chil­dren,” she re­mem­bered. Some of the cours­es Mon­trichard would lead in­clud­ed an ear­ly child­hood cen­tre, a day­care cen­tre, a den­tal unit, a med­ical cen­tre, and then skills such as plumb­ing, weld­ing, ma­son­ry, cater­ing, and nurs­ing. Many of the stu­dents who en­tered the pro­grammes were school dropouts, some ad­dict­ed to drugs and oth­ers who had no com­mu­ni­ca­tion with their par­ents.

She fur­ther re­called, “In those days, we lis­tened a lot to the kids, and one of their big prob­lems was fam­i­ly life. They couldn’t com­mu­ni­cate with their par­ents. In those days, the Beetham was not that dif­fer­ent; there was drugs, there was crime, and the stu­dents used to come to SER­VOL with knives. I had a whole bag of knives in my of­fice, and I told them when they grad­u­at­ed they would get it back. By then, they for­got.”

An­oth­er key is­sue Mon­trichard and her team were able to ad­dress was teenage preg­nan­cies. She re­called, “We did eval­u­a­tions, and I re­mem­ber one of the eval­u­a­tions we did when I went down there in 1974; the young women in the Beetham were get­ting preg­nant at 14 and 15 years. Af­ter the pro­gramme, we did an­oth­er eval­u­a­tion, and they were post­pon­ing preg­nan­cy in­to their mid­dle 20s.”

She and her team at SER­VOL would ed­u­cate the young women about sex­u­al­i­ty, their bod­ies, and oth­er skills such as read­ing and writ­ing.

A num­ber of the young women grad­u­at­ed and would go on to launch their own busi­ness­es and would come back to SER­VOL and em­ploy stu­dents. Mon­trichard was carv­ing out a life help­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble in the Beetham area at a time when many of her re­li­gious sis­ters were teach­ing in pres­tige Catholic schools across the coun­try.

“I felt a strong call that we were not reach­ing the re­al­ly poor, so­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble, hope­less peo­ple. I felt the strong call to go to the peo­ple who were on the mar­gins that no­body else want­ed to help,” Mon­trichard said of her de­ci­sion to stay in the Beetham area and help de­vel­op the young peo­ple liv­ing there.

50 years of ser­vice

Mon­trichard will cel­e­brate her 83rd birth­day on Tues­day, and this year marks her 65th an­niver­sary as a re­li­gious sis­ter. In De­cem­ber, she will mark 50 years of ser­vice to SER­VOL, and even half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, the Beetham com­mu­ni­ty and East Port-of-Spain are still plagued with many of the same crime prob­lems she faced in the 1970s.

"There is a lack of fam­i­ly life, a lack of ed­u­cat­ed par­ents, and how to bring up chil­dren," Mon­trichard an­swered when asked about why the crim­i­nal­i­ty per­sists.

She would jump-start sev­er­al pro­grammes down the decades aimed at fill­ing that void, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it came to fam­i­ly life.

She added, "All of these things we had to take up in the pro­gram, like ed­u­ca­tion in fam­i­ly life and the ex­pe­ri­ence of fam­i­ly life that we recre­at­ed at the Beetham, re­al­ly built them from hope­less to hope­ful." Mon­trichard re­signed as chair in March 2023 but now serves as a con­sul­tant.

She still vis­its the of­fice three times a week and at­tends meet­ings reg­u­lar­ly. She said these days even gang lead­ers in the com­mu­ni­ty are bring­ing young peo­ple to SER­VOL to get them in­volved in learn­ing var­i­ous trades.

Five decades af­ter she start­ed her work in the Beetham, while it may look like Mon­trichard hasn't had any im­pact on the state of the com­mu­ni­ty, she has touched scores of lives that could have oth­er­wise been lost.


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