Last week was Tourism Awareness Week and while there is a constant media bombardment to tell us how important the industry is to the country, truth be told other than large business directly involved in the thick of the money making, very little light shines on the small operators. We're talking about tour guides who cut a slender slice of the tourism pie for their daily living. Today we feature three of them, all women, who a year and a half ago ventured into the industry without any prior knowledge of it and are today new entrepreneurs.
Denise Grinage,
"Instead of giving a man a fish for a day, you'll teach him how to catch his fish for a day so he can get food for a lifetime and food to feed his family for a lifetime."
That was Denise Grinage in June of 2005 when she graduated from BRITE's tour guide program. She along with Irene Budd, Delita Gordon and others received certificates for having completed the program. That was a year and a half ago. These days the women who are now licensed tour guides can be found at the Tourism Village making their green backs. And by any measure they've learned to fish, fish for money that is.
Denise Grinage,
"If it was not for this job I don't know how I would make it because my husband isn't working and he is out here along with me now helping me out whenever I get a job. Jobs are scarce, jobs are scarce in our country and the thing I like most about it is because I do it on my own. I am my own boss, that is the main thing."
Alfonso NobleReporting,
So you come out here when you want and you go home when you want?
Denise Grinage,
"Yes. If I don't feel like coming out tomorrow I can just stay home and when I come out the other day I try to make it up for the day that I lost. When I finish the course, as the New Year passed I got up one morning and said I have to get into this tourist thing. So I got up the morning and I came out here. I didn't know who I was coming to. I just came out here and asked for information and I decided to come and try on my own. At the first it was a little embarrassing because it's a competition but as the days go by you get to learn it and it is good now."
Irene Budd,
"I am self employed now. I am self-employed so with that now I could be my own boss and I would like more programs like this to happen so that especially more female could be self-employed so they could have the power to get out there and stop letting people take them and have them doing a lot of violence, causing a lot of violence. So if they believe in themselves and stand up for their rights but I think they have the right to be self-employed or doing something so they can help themselves. It is making a lot different because now I can better educate my kids and educate myself too because I am going to school too so with that job that I had, I could have never educate three kids, one at sixth form, two at high school, plus myself. I think it is doing me good."
Delita Gordon,
"I am proud to be independent women working for myself and before I started tourism sometimes I was working and sometimes I wasn't. Most of the time I was being a housewife and since I did the course, and I have been out here, I get a lot of fun out of it, I've met a lot of people..."
Alfonso Noble,
You make a lot of money.
Delita Gordon,
"That too."
That independence is what Edmund Castro was looking for when he enlisted these women into the tour guide training program which was sponsored by the British High Commission.
Edmund Castro,
"We had received some funding through the British High Commission way back in 2002 and we had provided a training whereby we had received money initially for sixty and we ended up training over a hundred tour guides. Many of our tour guides are women, single mothers. Many of them are doing quite well."
Quite well indeed and the success of these women is a daily testament to personal empowerment and transformation that would have been unimaginable a generation ago.
As was mentioned in the story the British High Commission sponsored the scholarships for the women to take the courses. The Chairman Edmund Castro says he is hopeful that similar trainings can be organized.
