There is a re­li­gious say­ing that two are bet­ter than one be­cause if one falls, the oth­er would help him up. This con­cept has been on full dis­play in T&T dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Even be­fore front­line work­ers in a staff-strapped health sec­tor be­came over­whelmed and burnt out, sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions stepped up to pro­vide re­lief in the form of hot meals, pro­tec­tive gear and var­i­ous in­fra­struc­ture and gen­er­al moral sup­port.

One year on, de­spite the risk to their own health and safe­ty, these or­gan­i­sa­tions have con­tin­ued to of­fer their re­sources, time and skills through a steady stream of vol­un­teers from all over the coun­try. Per­haps their ef­forts have re­sound­ed most in re­cent dri­ves to have the pub­lic vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19 in mas­sive num­bers.

Against the ropes in a bat­tle with a vi­cious dis­ease, some have called this sig­nif­i­cant and promis­ing, and vol­un­teerism which sup­ports the dri­ve is alive and well in T&T.

Tricia Coosal, President of the TTMA.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

TTMA

Just over 5,000 vac­cine shots in one week­end!” The re­port rang out two Sun­days ago–Ju­ly 4. To date, over 20,000 first and sec­ond dos­es of vac­cines were ad­min­is­tered–work­ing out to ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11,000 peo­ple ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed at the site. For the TTMA, its mass vac­ci­na­tion ini­tia­tives have been a tremen­dous suc­cess.

The As­so­ci­a­tion's pres­i­dent, Tri­cia Coos­al, said last week marked their sev­enth com­plet­ed dri­ve to have mem­bers of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty take the COVID jab.

The TTMA is part of the Gov­ern­ment's pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship which aims to car­ry out mass vac­ci­na­tion dri­ves for the busi­ness sec­tor un­der the pro­gramme, “Vac­ci­nate to Op­er­ate”. These are meant to func­tion along­side the 24 pre­vi­ous­ly des­ig­nat­ed Vac­ci­na­tion Health Fa­cil­i­ties iden­ti­fied by the Min­istry of Health (MOH) which ac­com­mo­date much small­er num­bers of those want­i­ng to take the vac­cine.

Coos­al said the TTMA was ea­ger to see the econ­o­my of this coun­try “ful­ly op­er­a­tional and on the road to re­cov­ery” which would come soon­er the faster we vac­ci­nate.

Stat­ing that the TTMA had fol­lowed the strict guide­lines of the MOH, Coos­al praised the col­lab­o­ra­tion with the MOH, the ded­i­ca­tion of vol­un­teers and the ameni­ties of the Di­vali Na­gar site for the suc­cess of the ini­tia­tive thus far.

“(On) all TTMA’s vac­cine days there is strict ob­ser­vance of all MOH COVID-19 health and safe­ty pro­to­cols, this gives our vol­un­teers con­fi­dence and trust that TTMA is ef­fec­tive­ly ex­e­cut­ing all COVID-19 pro­to­cols that are re­quired. I have al­so been told by vol­un­teers that there is a high lev­el of ca­ma­raderie and a wel­com­ing en­vi­ron­ment cre­at­ed at our sites,” she said.

“I be­lieve this coun­try was built block by block on the sweat, de­ter­mi­na­tion and grit of our fore­fa­thers. I be­lieve by vol­un­teer­ing, I can ho­n­our those who came be­fore me and pro­vide an im­pe­tus for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to be able to live, sur­vive, grow and pros­per out of this pan­dem­ic. There is no greater re­ward than help­ing oth­ers and be­ing able to walk shoul­der to shoul­der with our front­line work­ers and vol­un­teers.”

Coos­al said it took a min­i­mum of 150 vol­un­teer doc­tors, nurs­es, ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tants and ad­min­is­tra­tive helpers to op­er­ate on each vac­cine day. These came from the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion led by its pres­i­dent, Dr Vishi Be­har­ry, SE­WA TT head­ed by pres­i­dent, Re­van Teelucks­ingh with whom the TTMA has part­nered, and from a pool of TTMA vol­un­teers, in­clud­ing staff. Coos­al al­so thanked the TTMA Sec­re­tari­at and CEO, Dr Mahin­dra Ramdeen for en­sur­ing prop­er lo­gis­tics which led to ef­fi­cien­cy on vac­ci­na­tion days.

SATT

From its mass vac­ci­na­tion site at Cen­tre Point Mall, Ch­agua­nas, the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT), has giv­en over 13,000 vac­cines to em­ploy­ees of su­per­mar­kets, those who work in dis­tri­b­u­tion and sup­ply and to oth­er mem­bers of the pub­lic. Their ef­forts are al­so part of the pub­lic–pri­vate part­ner­ship with the MOH.

SATT Pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee said the re­sponse to date has been “heart­en­ing”.

“Where vol­un­teers are con­cerned, the net­works de­vel­oped by stores as well as var­i­ous groups such as the Red Cross, AS­JA, TTR­NA (T&T Reg­is­tered Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion), T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion in con­junc­tion with SE­WA TT have been mas­sive,” Diptee said.

He said vol­un­teer­ing at the site in a pan­dem­ic earned young med­ical in­terns “valu­able med­ical ex­pe­ri­ence in a clin­i­cal set­ting,” while oth­er vol­un­teers took great pride in their roles.

“I al­so com­mend the pri­vate sec­tor stake­hold­ers for their su­per­hu­man yeo­man ef­forts to not on­ly fund these sites for the var­i­ous sec­tors but al­so give of their time and en­er­gy to be at the sites sup­port­ing," he said.

Diptee said there were many to be ac­knowl­edged, like Cen­tre Pointe Mall man­age­ment, Michael Se­heult of the Food Dis­trib­u­tors As­so­ci­a­tion who pro­vid­ed core staff, SATT Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Maria Mo­hammed-Ma­haraj, who shared her “ad­min­is­tra­tive ge­nius,” and Dr Nadi­ra Ram­bo­cas who ex­pert­ly con­cep­tu­alised lo­gis­tics for the site.

A ScoutsTT volunteer performs administrative duties at the Racquet Centre Mass Vaccination Site in Tacarigua, recently.

Scout­sTT

At the SATT vac­ci­na­tion site and vac­cine cen­tres ful­ly con­trolled by the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties in Trinidad, the Scout As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T stepped up, pro­vid­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port with tasks like ush­er­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic who show up seek­ing vac­cines, stamp­ing of vac­ci­na­tion cards, da­ta en­try and ex­pe­dit­ing the flow of peo­ple at the sites.

“Not a day went by that I wasn’t ter­ri­fied of re­turn­ing home to my fam­i­ly and po­ten­tial­ly in­fect­ing them. It be­came this weird para­dox, in that I am leav­ing my home to help make Trinidad a safer place from a virus and in do­ing so, there’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty that I can in­fect my fam­i­ly with that ex­act same virus,” ad­mit­ted Ane­sha Sam, 26, from St He­le­na, while giv­ing feed­back on her ex­pe­ri­ence to the As­so­ci­a­tion.

Sam is not a scout, but when she saw a fly­er on so­cial me­dia from the As­so­ci­a­tion ask­ing for vol­un­teers in May, she used her faith, de­cid­ing that she would “do her part and God would al­ways do His.”

The Uni­ver­si­ty of the South­ern Caribbean bi­ol­o­gy stu­dent who helped out at the Na­tion­al Rac­quet Sports Cen­tre in Tacarigua said de­spite the en­er­gy and faith it re­quired, she felt “priv­i­leged” to have played a part in putting mem­bers of the pub­lic at ease and con­tribut­ing to the fight against COVID.

Forty-eight-year-old Richard Robin­son of the 1st Queen's Roy­al Col­lege Scout Troop knew that med­ical pro­fes­sion­als would need ad­min­is­tra­tive back­up at a mass vac­ci­na­tion site while they fo­cus on their du­ties. Hav­ing worked in the Min­istry of Health, he had ob­served the H1N1 vac­cine process years ago and de­cid­ed to vol­un­teer for the COVID vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve to lead by ex­am­ple.

Si­lenc­ing his fears of con­tract­ing the virus dai­ly, he went about his du­ties co­or­di­nat­ing all Scout­sTT vol­un­teers at the UTT, Ch­agua­nas to en­sure ef­fi­cien­cy at the site. He said in a time when spir­its were low, he took pride in mak­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of the peo­ple who come for vac­cines less stress­ful and ap­pre­ci­at­ed their sat­is­fac­tion with the ser­vice at the site.

Re­li­able and pas­sion­ate, the vol­un­teers keep com­ing back each day with smiles on their faces, Deputy Na­tion­al Scout Com­mis­sion­er (Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment), Di­anne Dhan­path told Sun­day Guardian. They treat peo­ple who come to them with pa­tience and care and have al­so de­vel­oped a spir­it of ca­ma­raderie.

Dhan­path said vol­un­teers help vac­ci­nate the el­der­ly or dis­abled in their cars if such peo­ple are un­able to come out of their ve­hi­cles, as­sist with those in wheel­chairs and al­so do fol­low-up calls to mon­i­tor for pos­si­ble side ef­fects of the vac­cine.

Dhan­path said the num­ber of Scout­sTT vol­un­teers grew from 50 in the first two weeks and now stands at around 150.

She said as part of the Scout As­so­ci­a­tion's val­ues of ser­vice to so­ci­ety, the or­gan­i­sa­tion had reached out to the MOH to of­fer their ac­tiv­i­ty cen­tres in PoS, San Fer­nan­do and Cou­va as vac­cine sites to aid in the Gov­ern­ment's Mass Vac­ci­na­tion dri­ve which came on stream in late April. The As­so­ci­a­tion end­ed up mak­ing a call for vol­un­teers and ini­tial­ly asked for Scout As­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers, but when the gen­er­al pub­lic start­ed of­fer­ing as­sis­tance, they ac­cept­ed.

A mem­ber of their board, Dhan­path al­so sought help from main­ly nurs­es of the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre. By May 24, the Scout As­so­ci­a­tion had con­duct­ed an ori­en­ta­tion for vol­un­teers, ap­point­ed team cap­tains from their Scout­ing body and start­ed send­ing out vol­un­teers to the Rac­quet Cen­tre. Scout­sTT vol­un­teers al­so took up du­ties at UTT in Ch­agua­nas, the South­ern Acad­e­my of Per­form­ing Arts, and at Cen­tre Point Mall, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with SATT, the Di­a­betes As­so­ci­a­tion and the Red Cross. At these sites, they sup­port­ed health­care work­ers in vac­ci­nat­ing about 500 peo­ple per day.

They will al­so be on hand when a fifth vac­ci­na­tion site soon opens in Pe­nal.

Speak­ing to Sun­day Guardian, Na­tion­al Scout Com­mis­sion­er, Mark Ains­ley John said he had been in­volved in Scout­ing since the age of six and hailed the val­ues of ser­vice to one's com­mu­ni­ty pro­mot­ed by the move­ment.

“... we recog­nise the spe­cif­ic skills that vol­un­teers and young peo­ple who are taught to vol­un­teer can trans­fer to their com­mu­ni­ties.

“Young peo­ple are in the de­vel­op­men­tal phase of their lives and when they vol­un­teer, the per­son­al ben­e­fits are am­pli­fied. So the spe­cif­ic trans­ferrable skills such as work­ing in teams, prob­lem-solv­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the at­tain­ment of tech­ni­cal or prac­ti­cal skills, as well as an in­crease in con­fi­dence and self-es­teem are some of the re­al ben­e­fits that are gained by any­one who vol­un­teers.”

He said while vol­un­teer­ing de­vel­oped the in­di­vid­ual, fos­ter­ing crit­i­cal think­ing–like when their vol­un­teers had to as­sist in re-con­fig­ur­ing the set-up at one vac­ci­na­tion site to ac­com­mo­date ac­cess to wheel­chairs– it added eco­nom­ic val­ue and built the so­cial cap­i­tal of the so­ci­ety.

John said peo­ple had vol­un­teered for the vac­cine dri­ves even while on va­ca­tion, worked ex­ten­sive hours at the sites and stayed back to wrap up and clean up each day.

“It makes me be­lieve in our cit­i­zens once again,” John said.

In­ter­est­ed peo­ple can ac­cess the Scout As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Face­book page @TTScouts.