Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Ako­sua Dar­d­aine Ed­wards is the founder of the Ni­Na Young Women’s Lead­er­ship pro­gramme, a role that has ex­em­pli­fied her ded­i­ca­tion to serv­ing oth­ers.

This role has gar­nered her the In­spi­ra­tional Emerg­ing Leader Award from the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Fo­rum of T&T (IWFTT) to be con­ferred in Sep­tem­ber, a recog­ni­tion of her pos­i­tive in­flu­ence in the lives of hun­dreds of young women and girls in T&T.

Dar­d­aine Ed­wards has spent over ten years spear­head­ing the Ni­Na Young Women’s Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme, with her work in the field of so­cial ser­vice be­stow­ing var­i­ous ti­tles such as So­cial En­tre­pre­neur of the Year in T&T and the Merikin Award for Dis­tin­guished Lead­er­ship in Women’s Af­fairs.

Grow­ing up with the strong in­flu­ence of her fam­i­ly’s ma­tri­arch, her grand­moth­er, Dar­d­aine Ed­wards, recog­nis­es in ret­ro­spect that a great deal of her tenac­i­ty and dri­ve to serve were borne from ob­serv­ing her grand­moth­er, who even­tu­al­ly be­came a coun­sel­lor in their area.

“She was a demon­stra­tion of in­de­pen­dence,” she says. “I didn’t recog­nise her at the time, but she was au­da­cious and made bold moves. If the road need­ed fix­ing, she would find a way to be heard. She spent a lot of time serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.”

Dar­d­aine Ed­wards re­calls that at a young age there was a per­son­al de­sire to leave her vil­lage and see the world and so she took ad­van­tage of the ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties that came her way. She pur­sued her ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in Lon­don, in­clud­ing an MBA in En­tre­pre­neur­ship and Small Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment, and be­came an ac­coun­tant, re­main­ing in the UK.

In 2008, Dar­d­aine Ed­wards re­turned to T&T with her then-hus­band and was ap­point­ed as the Chief Fi­nan­cial Of­fi­cer of a com­pa­ny, feel­ing at the time that she was on the right and con­ven­tion­al path to suc­cess.

How­ev­er, short­ly af­ter, in 2010, she lost her job, went through a di­vorce, and “be­gan spi­ralling, un­sure of how I would pick up the pieces of my life.” She re­turned to the UK to pur­sue a PhD, and it was dur­ing this time, while she vol­un­teered with an NGO, that “some­thing in­side of me shift­ed, I felt that this type of vol­un­teerism was what I was sup­posed to be do­ing.”

Asked to go to Ugan­da to work with a com­mu­ni­ty to help them re­build through en­tre­pre­neur­ship, Dar­d­aine Ed­wards set off on an 18-month jour­ney that would dras­ti­cal­ly al­ter the course of her life. Dur­ing her time in Ugan­da, she “learnt so much, and it shift­ed how I thought about my­self. It was on­ly then that I was tru­ly in­tro­duced to my­self.”

Be­ing part of the pro­gramme en­cour­aged her to think crit­i­cal­ly about who she was, not who she was as tied to a job or a role, and how she could make a re­al im­pact in her own com­mu­ni­ty.

“In my mind, I could ho­n­our T&T from afar,” she says. “But the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty pushed me to go home, and ho­n­our the place that I came from.”

Dar­d­aine Ed­wards then re­turned to T&T and found­ed the Ni­Na Young Women’s Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme as a means of men­tor­ing and sup­port­ing young women in their tran­si­tion from the state care sys­tem to adult­hood. Ni­Na pro­vides fi­nan­cial lit­er­a­cy, en­tre­pre­neur­ial skills, emo­tion­al sup­port, ed­u­ca­tion­al sup­port, and guid­ance for women who have reached the age of 18 and are en­ter­ing the “re­al world.”

The pro­gramme has four main streams of work: the School Pro­gramme, Jude’s Home for Girls Pro­gramme, Sum­mer Pro­gramme and Tran­si­tion Pro­gramme. With the sup­port of grant fund­ing and oth­er do­na­tions, Dar­d­aine Ed­wards’ mis­sion is to cre­ate re­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for these young women to flour­ish, in­clud­ing help­ing them be­come tru­ly in­de­pen­dent.

The pro­grammes in­cor­po­rate con­fi­dence-build­ing ac­tiv­i­ties, pub­lic speak­ing, work­shops on how to present a busi­ness pitch, and oth­er skills such as mak­ing tooth­paste and dyes.

Some of the high­lights of her work are min­i­mal­ly tan­gi­ble, such as see­ing the young women learn to reg­u­late emo­tions and change their habits, while some are sig­nif­i­cant to be­hold, such as see­ing them grad­u­ate from uni­ver­si­ty, leave abu­sive re­la­tion­ships, se­cure hous­es and man­age their fi­nances. As a so­cial en­tre­pre­neur, Dar­d­aine Ed­wards has to man­age the fine line of ded­i­ca­tion to her work, which can be emo­tion­al­ly tax­ing and en­sur­ing she takes care of her­self.

“I don’t play around with self-care,” she laughs. “I’m con­sis­tent. Every Sat­ur­day that I’m in T&T you’ll find me at the beach at 6 am. I al­so go to the gym, hike, box and main­tain a dai­ly spir­i­tu­al prac­tice that in­cludes med­i­ta­tion.”

Be­ing in na­ture grounds her, and she en­sures to bal­ance the rigours of her ser­vice to oth­ers with serv­ing her­self. Her role of­ten re­quires her to men­tor and ad­vise young women, and she takes the job of giv­ing ad­vice very se­ri­ous­ly, in­sist­ing that she does not give oth­ers ad­vice that she doesn’t take heed to.

“Make your­self proud,” is her first tenet of wis­dom; “it’s an in­side job, and you have to show up and de­cide to be re­spon­si­ble, con­sis­tent, and dis­ci­plined in or­der to achieve it.”

One of Ni­Na’s sig­na­ture pro­grammes, Choic­es, re­flects this ethos, that the onus is on the in­di­vid­ual to make the best choic­es to make one­self proud. She al­ways en­cour­ages women to re­mem­ber their in­nate worth and to make de­ci­sions and pur­sue ac­tions hold­ing dear that sense of wor­thi­ness.

Ako­sua Dar­d­aine Ed­wards is not sim­ply of­fer­ing lip ser­vice to women in T&T, but her ded­i­ca­tion, pas­sion, and pur­pose are af­fect­ing re­al change in the lives of our young women.

She keeps in touch with 90 per cent of the women who go through the Ni­Na pro­gramme and has found re­al joy in see­ing how much im­pact her or­gan­i­sa­tion has made in their lives. Ho­n­oured and “shocked” to be se­lect­ed as a re­cip­i­ent of the IWFTT award, she is lead­ing the charge, up­lift­ing young women in T&T.