The Mnistry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Af­fairs has met with the non-gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tion Is There Not A Cause in a bid to deep­en en­gage­ment with NGOs.

The min­istry is­sued the fol­low­ing state­ment af­ter the meet­ing.

"With the dev­as­tat­ing so­cioe­co­nom­ic im­pacts of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on in­di­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties, the need to forge deep­er al­liances with non-gov­ern­men­tal and civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions, al­so called ‘the third sec­tor’, has now be­come im­per­a­tive, es­pe­cial­ly at the lo­cal lev­el. There is al­so a greater need to find the vul­ner­a­ble where they are, and pro­vide re­al time and rel­e­vant as­sis­tance to those most in need. Against this back­ground, Sen­a­tor The Ho­n­ourable Don­na Cox, Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, joined by mem­bers of the Min­istry’s Ex­ec­u­tive, ear­li­er to­day, met with the Founder and Team Lead of Is There Not A Cause (ITNAC), Avonelle Hec­tor-Joseph. The meet­ing was held at the Min­istry’s Head Of­fice on St Vin­cent Street, Port of Spain.

In her open­ing re­marks, the Min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed that the main ob­jec­tive of meet­ing with the or­gan­i­sa­tion is to fos­ter deep­er en­gage­ment with the NGO sec­tor, so that there is more shar­ing of ex­pe­ri­ences, re­sources, ad­vice and sup­port, in or­der to help, em­pow­er and trans­form the lives of the vul­ner­a­ble in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter: “The Min­istry be­lieves that it is the NGOs, CBOs and FBOs that as­sist us in our man­date for so­cial trans­for­ma­tion”. She then in­vit­ed Ms Hec­tor to pro­vide an overview of her or­gan­i­sa­tion, which has been in ex­is­tence for the past nine­teen (19) years (since 2002) and is known for its first re­spon­der hu­man­i­tar­i­an and dis­as­ter re­lief work lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Mrs Hec­tor-Joseph, shared with those present that ITNAC’s core tar­get in­cludes sin­gle moth­ers, de­por­tees, vic­tims of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, to name a few. Among the var­i­ous projects and ini­tia­tives un­der­tak­en by the NGO in­clude tran­si­tion­al hous­ing, shel­ters for vic­tims of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence and evic­tion, mo­bile kitchen, out­reach to street dwellers, as well as a school for mi­grant chil­dren. ITNAC have al­so func­tioned to pro­vide as­sis­tance to Guyana, Kenya, Haiti, In­dia, St Lu­cia and St Vin­cent.

PS Bai­ley-Sobers al­so shared some in­sights on the var­i­ous projects and ini­tia­tives be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Min­istry, which all aim at pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion and sup­port to vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions, help­ing them to be­come self-suf­fi­cient and re­silient, through a seam­less, in­te­grat­ed pack­age of so­cial ser­vices.

Min­is­ter Cox com­mend­ed Ms Hec­tor for the tremen­dous work ITNAC has been do­ing to pro­mote so­cial de­vel­op­ment across the di­as­po­ra. She fur­ther in­di­cat­ed that ITNAC’s work aligns well with that of the Min­istry’s and there­fore calls for deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion and part­ner­ship go­ing for­ward. The Min­is­ter al­so in­di­cat­ed that the Min­istry in­tends to es­tab­lish a Cit­i­zen’s En­gage­ment Unit soon, to pro­vide di­rect con­tact and so­cial re­sponse to all vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens in Trinidad and To­ba­go; and that civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions will play a key role. She in­di­cat­ed that there was need for fur­ther dis­cus­sion on ways in which the Min­istry and by ex­ten­sion the Gov­ern­ment could help sup­port NGOs like ITNAC. In this re­gard, a fol­low up meet­ing with the Min­istry’s NGO Unit will be arranged as a fol­low up to the meet­ing.

In clos­ing, the Min­is­ter gave the as­sur­ance that the Min­istry’s sup­port will be avail­able to ITNAC and oth­er sim­i­lar NGOs that pos­sess an ad­mirable track record of im­pact­ing and chang­ing the lives of the vul­ner­a­ble, through in­no­v­a­tive and cre­ative pro­grammes, projects and ini­tia­tives."