Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 06/Mar 08:53

Caring and wonderful women

Jerome Teelucksingh INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day will be celebrated on Saturday. And there is a need to remember the many caring and patriotic women. In the Presbyterian Church, women played a crucial role in uplifting females in our country’s education system. From 1876 to 1901, the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS), based in Canada, sent 14 female teachers to Trinidad to assist in primary schools. By the early 20th century, the local branch of the WFMS was being referred to as the Women’s Missionary Society (WMS). The WFMS gave financial assistance, in the form of scholarships, to the WMS for the training of Trinidadian women in Christian education. Mabel Brandow, whose service to Trinidad spanned from 1946 to 1975, fondly recalled the WMS as a vibrant arm of the Presbyterian Church. It was the local WMS which approved and encouraged the training of local Indian women leaders known as “Bible women” who worked assiduously in rural communities and led in prayer, fellowship and outreach. As a result of the overwhelming response from women who were eager to serve as Bible women, training classes were organised in Couva, San Fernando and St Augustine. They usually served on a part-time basis and were the first female workers of the Presbyterian Church in Trinidad. The creation of social institutions and programmes of outreach demonstrated that these missionaries were philanthropists and genuinely interested in the welfare of the citizens. In 1890, Sarah Morton (wife of Rev John Morton) founded a Girls’ Home in Tunapuna in which young women were taught English, Hindi, hygiene, religious knowledge, sewing, cooking and household management. Interestingly, Modestina Samlalsingh, the first Indian organist in the Presbyterian Church, was taught music by Sarah Morton. In 1889 Adella Archibald established the Iere Home in Princes Town and in 1905 she was appointed as the first superintendent of the Iere Home. Other areas were not neglected and another "home for girls" was founded at Couva in 1895. By 1905 Archibald, through these institutions, initiated the teaching of girls in Christian work, domestic duties and English. Vashti Guyadeen noted that it soon became evident that “...these homes were used as devices for spreading Christianity, Western ideologies and cultures, and more specifically, the Victorian housewife ideology.” From the pages of her diary, Archibald vividly reflected on the home’s service to society, “Iere Home...drawing its pupils chiefly from the country districts, though some were from the towns, was overfull without much chance of enlargement.” This initiative would later influence the Presbyterian Church and by the 1960s it was a member of the Christian Home and Family Council, which had affiliations with 14 churches and organisations. Undoubtedly, the activities at Iere led to the founding of women’s groups, an increased attendance of females in schools and churches, and the improvement of the girls’ role in home life. Archibald meticulously laid the groundwork for the social work of the church among women. In 1912, she founded a school for orphan girls in Princes Town and was later given responsibility of another school at La Pique. Other women of this calibre included Annie Blackadder, a Canadian who was appointed the first missionary of the WFMS in 1876. She worked in Princes Town in 1876 and after three years was transferred to Tunapuna where she founded the Tacarigua CMI school. She worked at this school for more than two decades and it was renamed the Blackadder Memorial School (today it is known as the Tacarigua Presbyterian School). Blackadder visited villages on the sugar estates and established temperance societies. By 1965, there were 74 WMS branches in Trinidad. Also, the WMS had been assisting and subsiding Naparima Girls’ High School. Women served in other areas. In 1894 the Happy Workers’ Society, founded by Ms Grant at the Susamachar Presbyterian Church, conducted courses in domestic matters and dressmaking, held for the benefit of young women. This society in Susamachar also made regular contributions to social service institutions in San Fernando. Due to social and cultural mores, Indian females were usually illiterate or semi-literate and forced to enter marriages at a relatively young age, and were ostracised in widowhood. Rev Idris Hamid, a Presbyterian minister, described Indian women as having to serve a “double indenture.” This is an accurate description in a male-dominated society in which women avoided public places and institutions as schools and churches. Despite these early achievements of the Presbyterian Church, among women there was still a feeling that the mission’s work was not fully contributing to their liberation. The post Caring and wonderful women appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.