Ten­nille Al­leyne

Re­bekah Ali- Gou­veia is nurs­ing her sev­en week old ba­by girl while we en­gage in con­ver­sa­tion about her oth­er ba­by - The Elpis Cen­tre which she found­ed about two years ago to sup­port women and fam­i­lies dur­ing and af­ter cri­sis preg­nan­cies. Elpis is Greek for "Hope".As the moth­er of four chil­dren Ali-Gou­veia must know a thing or two about moth­er­hood and she's ob­vi­ous­ly good at mul­ti task­ing.The mar­ried 36-year-old at­tor­ney-at-law with her own pri­vate prac­tice, chose to down­size her du­ties as a lawyer to fo­cus on the Elpis Cen­tre, and of course moth­er­hood." I've been called a fool and crazy by some," she said blunt­ly about the re­sponse to the path she has tak­en." I at­tend­ed a con­fer­ence in 2007 which dealt with is­sues fac­ing women and fam­i­lies, and I left feel­ing very strong­ly that women need­ed sup­port dur­ing cri­sis preg­nan­cies."Ali-Gou­veia iden­ti­fied cri­sis preg­nan­cies as un­planned preg­nan­cies where the moth­er is fear­ful or en­coun­ters pres­sures from work, school, her spous­es, part­ner or oth­er mem­ber of her fam­i­ly. Es­sen­tial­ly, it's a preg­nan­cy where a moth­er may find her self feel­ing over­whelmed and would need sup­port, es­pe­cial­ly in cas­es where she may be con­sid­er­ing abor­tion.

Ig­nit­ed by her cause, Ali-Gou­veia re­lent­less­ly did re­search for two years and has since , at­tend­ed con­fer­ences in Hol­land, USA and Trinidad, even part­ner­ing with Life In­ter­na­tion­al and Heart­beat In­ter­na­tion­al for ex­per­tise and train­ing on pro­vid­ing care and sup­port for preg­nant women in cri­sis and abor­tion re­cov­ery for women." I did a lot of net­work­ing and re­search be­cause I want­ed to make sure that what I was do­ing was well es­tab­lished."In 2009, the Elpis Cen­tre opened its doors to women and fam­i­lies in need, and since then has pro­vid­ed hun­dreds of in­di­vid­u­als with in­for­ma­tion, train­ing and ma­te­ri­als on the sanc­ti­ty of hu­man life and fam­i­ly is­sues in per­son and via the ra­dio. In­clud­ed in this num­ber are clients who have di­rect­ly ben­e­fit­ed from their coun­sel­ing ser­vices.The Cen­tre, which pro­vides help from two lo­ca­tions –Wood­brook and Ch­agua­nas – of­fers par­ent­ing class­es, sanc­ti­ty of life, par­ent­ing and child abuse work­shops, one-on -one psy­cho­log­i­cal and peer coun­sel­ing for moth­ers and fam­i­lies, med­ical re­fer­rals, meals, cloth­ing and even post preg­nan­cy sup­port and abor­tion re­cov­ery sup­port.

The staff of the Elpis cen­tre are vol­un­teers who give of their time and ex­per­tise for free and all client ser­vices are free and con­fi­den­tial save for sub­sidised cost for train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion pro­grammes.Even though Ali-Gou­veia is a res­olute pro-child, pro woman ac­tivist, she said the Elpis Cen­tre is open and non judg­men­tal." We don't tell clients what to do, we lis­ten and al­low them to of­fload their fears. We then walk through the op­tions and give them fac­tu­al in­for­ma­tion and emo­tion­al sup­port."From her ex­pe­ri­ence though, she has been con­vinced that many moth­ers in­deed want to ex­pe­ri­ence moth­er­hood, but that the ini­tial shock of an un­planned preg­nan­cy makes them fear­ful."They just want to be heard. There has to be some­where they could have a voice to of­fload their fears."Ac­cord­ing to Jean­nie French 'the an­swer to a cri­sis preg­nan­cy is to elim­i­nate the cri­sis not the child ' and that is what we are here for."The sen­ti­ment of grat­i­tude from fam­i­lies and women alike, is the hall­mark of those who have walked through the Cen­tre's doors.Even though the Elpis Cen­tre has been op­er­at­ing as a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion for the past two years, the tran­si­tion from at­tor­ney to run­ning the Cen­tre, on an al­most full time ba­sis, has been try­ing at times for Ali-Gou­veia. The cen­tre al­so ac­cepts do­na­tions of gen­tly used items from in­di­vid­u­als, or­gan­i­sa­tions and church­es that share the views and vi­sion of the Cen­tre. These are then dis­trib­uted to those in need or sold at a very low cost of $1.00 and up at their sec­ond chances yard sales.

" There have been ad­just­ments I've had to make mov­ing from an in­de­pen­dent pro­fes­sion­al , earn­ing as much as I want­ed to run­ning an NGO."She al­so thanked her hus­band for his un­der­stand­ing and sup­port in her new ca­reer-fo­cus.Ali-Gou­veia is re­lent­less in her ef­forts to ed­u­cate those about the sanc­ti­ty of hu­man life and post-abor­tion stress. She pos­sess­es a qui­et re­silience in her quest to en­sure that the Elpis Cen­tre would one day be­come ubiq­ui­tous through­out T&T and in the es­tab­lish­ment of shel­ters for women in need of emer­gency ac­co­mo­da­tion and tran­si­tion­al shel­ters dur­ing their preg­nan­cy. She al­so hopes her sto­ry can con­jure a light of hope for oth­er women and fam­i­lies in cri­sis, or even in­spire in­di­vid­u­als to do what they can to help oth­ers with­in their own com­mu­ni­ties."No amount of mon­ey that I have fore­gone could re­place the joy and heal­ing that comes when a moth­er rec­on­ciles with her child."