Two local non-governmental organisations, Global Centre for Systemic Change Outcomes, Research, Evaluation and Development Eastern Caribbean Inc, (GCSCORED EC) and The Catherine Cecilia Foundation Inc. (CCF) offered a one-day workshop to teachers, staff and parents of the South St George School.
This budding partnership between these NGOs is setting a trend for other healthy collaborations amongst other organisations in Grenada.
GCSCORED EC Inc. was created and is headed by Grenadian-Trinidadian-American Psychologist Dr Yvonne Murray-Larrier. The Catherine Cecilia Foundation (CCF) was founded and is directed by Calisha Hyacinth Purcell Charles a Mental Health Clinician who specialises in addiction.
The impetus for this collaboration is grounded in the fact that Covid-19 has exacerbated the deficits in relationship capacity-building skills. These deficits adversely impact a person’s abilities to successfully relate and navigate their intra and interpersonal lives. Relationship capacity-building skills are foundational to creating a civil society at all its levels of social organisation — personal relationships, families, school, business, church, national, and international.
On 7 October 2022, the South St George school community had the opportunity to be trained by Dr Murray-Larrier and her team on how they can become conscious problem solvers and architects of their destiny. The RUMERTIME Process® conceptualised by Dr Murray-Larrier is a relationship prevention intervention strategy when implemented with fidelity can educate, equip, and empower persons from diverse settings with healthy MARKERS® (Mindsets, Activities, Relationships, Knowledge, Emotions, Resources, Strategies) to effectively and successfully navigate their familial, educational, personal and professional responsibilities and relationships.
Dr Murray-Larrier and her team who were in Grenada, reported a successful event. Teachers were taught how to incorporate the RUMERTIME Process® in the classroom and to educate and equip themselves with a research-based, practice-based, culturally responsive and innovative strategy to meet their social-emotional needs. By cultivating their own emotional needs, they are able to educate and equip students with social-emotional skills necessary to work with their peers, families and communities. The result is an effective and supportive collaboration between home-school-work-community.
“I have learnt the importance of allowing myself and my students to learn how to express their emotions and the importance of doing so. This really stuck with me, “Behind every behaviour is a belief,” said one teacher from the school. It is hoped that this collaboration will spark the interest of other institutions, organisations, and decision-makers to make the bold step to educate, equip, and empower their persons in schools, workplaces, and communities about social-emotional education and wellness, as a transformational process to create a more productive Grenada. Hyacinth Purcell Charles who has had a long history with GCSCORED having been trained as a Wellness Champion, is elated about this opportunity for the staff of South St George to be trained by Dr Murray-Larrier. “This collaboration is strategic and aligns with CCF’s mission which is to create a healthier, and more knowledgeable Grenada,” she added.
GCSCORED EC