So­raya Khan - Pres­i­dent,

In­ter­Club of Trinidad & To­ba­go

When In­ter­Club was found­ed in 1984 and 39 years lat­er, our mem­ber­ship con­tin­ues to ho­n­our the mis­sion state­ment “to em­pow­er all women, es­pe­cial­ly the mar­gin­alised and un­der­served.” On be­half of our mem­bers, I am de­light­ed to join women across the globe in cel­e­brat­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day (IWD). This cel­e­bra­tion at the lo­cal lev­el in T&T takes place every year. Our an­nu­al IWD Tea is now a sta­ple on the cal­en­dar of events of T&T. This year was no dif­fer­ent, as we cel­e­brat­ed IWD with our An­nu­al Af­ter­noon Tea at the Hilton Trinidad on March 5.  

Over the years, our con­cerns have been am­pli­fied by the var­i­ous re­ports of vi­o­lence against women and hu­man traf­fick­ing of women par­tic­u­lar­ly for pros­ti­tu­tion. We part­nered with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty in 2020 and be­came part of the work­ing group to im­ple­ment the Na­tion­al Plan of Ac­tion against traf­fick­ing in per­sons. As part of the Pre­ven­tion Team, we worked in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­ers to raise aware­ness of this scourge that has be­come a very fright­en­ing part of our na­tion­al life.

While we con­cen­trate pri­mar­i­ly on the plight of women and chil­dren in trou­bled ar­eas, the Brah­ma Ku­maris, an­oth­er mem­ber group of the In­ter­Club, work­ing for peace, em­barked in 1988 on a Prison Min­istry at Car­rera for men, which con­tin­ues. One of the projects is art in the form of paint­ings. They pro­duce an­nu­al­ly an art ex­hi­bi­tion, which is al­ways ex­hib­it­ed at the In­ter­Club’s In­ter­na­tion­al Day’s An­nu­al Tea with an auc­tion of one of the paint­ings.  

The oth­er paint­ings are ex­hib­it­ed at an­oth­er venue lat­er on for sale. Pro­ceeds from these sales are ploughed back in­to the project so that sup­plies could be pur­chased, and the project main­tained. The paint­ings are done by some of the pris­on­ers at Car­rera, and our sis­ter mem­ber, Kay Nar­i­nesingh is the per­son re­spon­si­ble for this project.

An­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant high­light of the event is the pre­sen­ta­tion of the In­ter­Club’s An­nu­al Award to a woman who made an out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tion to mo­ti­vat­ing women to reach their full po­ten­tial by em­pow­er­ing them in one way or the oth­er. Our re­cip­i­ent this year was Ms Shi­han Mar­va John-Lo­gan of The Ryu Dan Do­jo Youth Em­pow­er Cen­tre in En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas. She was recog­nised not on­ly by the In­ter­Club but al­so by the UN, US­AID In­ter­na­tion­al, coun­ter­ing vi­o­lent ex­trem­ism, and the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment; speak­ing on plat­forms on crime and vi­o­lence and of­ten shar­ing her dif­fi­cult life’s jour­ney, all to in­spire oth­ers to do bet­ter.

We are thank­ful to the many sup­port­ers who pur­chased tick­ets to at­tend the an­nu­al event which saw many foun­da­tion mem­bers, for­mer pres­i­dents, cur­rent pres­i­dents of our 17 women’s NGOs and sev­er­al dig­ni­taries. We are de­light­ed that Cab­i­net min­is­ters, Sen­a­tor the Ho­n­ourable Don­na Cox, Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, The Ho­n­ourable Pene­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, the Ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Mrs Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher, Asst Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons, Mr Joseph Nel­son, wife of the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter of T&T Mrs Sharon Row­ley and Mrs Za­lay­har Has­sanali, wife of for­mer pres­i­dent Noor Has­sanali, who all took time out of their busi­ness sched­ules to at­tend the event and joined us in the usu­al light­ing of the can­dles, all singing “I am Woman”–All Em­brac­ing Eq­ui­ty.

As I shared last Sun­day in my con­tri­bu­tion, “We are women, we are pow­er­ful, we are de­ter­mined, we can do any­thing we put our minds to. We are moth­ers, sis­ters, daugh­ters, wives,” and the list goes on. We are not ac­cept­ing that in our so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions are al­lowed to pros­per through pros­ti­tu­tion and the sale of women and chil­dren for prof­it. Cit­i­zens, we can­not close our eyes to what is hap­pen­ing in our coun­try and re­main silent. We, the women of the In­ter­Club, will do all in our pow­er to as­sist oth­er col­lab­o­ra­tive bod­ies in their ef­forts to erad­i­cate these crimes.  

In clos­ing, I would like to say to the women of our is­lands, that to­geth­er we can skip and jump at the same time, and to­geth­er we can move moun­tains so that great things can hap­pen. Let us con­tin­ue to shine, em­pow­er each oth­er, em­pow­er our fam­i­lies, our com­mu­ni­ties, our coun­try, and even­tu­al­ly the world.  Yes, we can, be­cause we are women. Hap­py In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day!

Women’s Groups of the In­ter­Club

* African Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (AWA)

* Brah­ma Ku­maris Women’s Group

* Cana­di­an Women’s Group

* CEDAW Com­mit­tee of T&T (CCoTT)

* Hin­du Women’s Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T inc.

* In­di­an Women’s Group of Trinidad and To­ba­go

* In­ner Wheel Club of Trinidad and To­ba­go

* Mul­ti­cul­tur­al Club of Trinidad and To­ba­go

* Na­tion­al Mus­lim Women’s Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T

* Net­work of NGOs

* Net­work of Rur­al Women Pro­duc­ers of T&T

* Pe­tro­le­um Women’s Club of Trinidad and To­ba­go

* Sorop­ti­mist In­ter­na­tion­al Ch­agua­nas

* Sorop­ti­mist In­ter­na­tion­al Es­per­ance

* Syr­i­an/Lebanese Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion (SLWA) 

* Women in Ac­tion for the Needy & Des­ti­tute (WAND)

* Women of Sub­stance–To­ba­go

2023 In­ter­Club

Shi­han Mar­va John-Lo­gan

Very ear­ly in my life, I knew that I want­ed to be some­body great in the world, some­body that oth­ers could de­pend on. I had no idea what my pur­pose was but I knew I want­ed to be some­one that would pos­i­tive­ly im­pact the world. I know this be­cause, from my ear­ly years, I was help­ing our fam­i­ly and peo­ple in my com­mu­ni­ty, with sim­ple chores, my peers with school­work, and se­nior cit­i­zens by read­ing the news­pa­per or clean­ing their homes. Many times af­ter help­ing the peo­ple in my com­mu­ni­ty they would give me a small to­ken for the ser­vice. I had no idea at that time help­ing freely with­out look­ing for any re­ward would in turn do just that.

The mes­sage I want to leave for the en­tire world is this, “Each one, teach one; Each one, help one; One team, one voice; No­body gets left be­hind.”

Every life is im­por­tant. Pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for our youths, and they will grab on to it for a pos­i­tive out­come. Don’t lock them out. Do not!!! Words have pow­er, speak pos­i­tive things in­to their lives and pos­i­tive things will hap­pen. Pro­tect our girls and women be­cause there is no fu­ture with­out us.

I leave you with peace and love. Bless­ings.