Category: Features

By Utamu Belle At 26 years old, Lindener Taneila Croal has her eyes set on living out her dream as an enterprising Guyanese woman. And nothing is stopping this vibrant young woman from achieving her goals and her shot at success. Though she’s a teacher by profession, Croal is also pursuing her passion of establishing herself as a successful businesswoman and outstanding entrepreneur in the Linden community. Her love for styling hair and nails has led her down the path of launching her own salon, “Neila’s Hair and Nails Empire”…

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By Lakhram Bhagirat Sometimes finding the right word to ascribe to your feelings of intimacy and vulnerability are hard to find. Sometimes the words escape us and we are just left there with mouths agape and thoughts floating around in our heads. However, for some of us that almost never happens. Some of us are well-versed in putting our feelings on paper and exposing our vulnerability for the world to indulge. Our words let them into our worlds and though they’re mere visitors to our isolated paradises, they quite often…

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equity over equality By Marlee Silva for ABC News International Women’s Day was a rather foreign event on the calendar during my high school years of the early 2010s. In fact, the only time I’d hear it mentioned was when my pubescent, male peers would make sexist jokes about us females belonging in the kitchen, or whine in the playground about the lack of an international men’s day. I had a relatively progressive friend group at the time, but none of us ever seemed to think the annual event had…

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A giant portrait of Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg has been unveiled in West Yorkshire to mark International Women’s Day. The 60m (196ft) long artwork, on a playing field at Hebden Royd Primary School, West Yorkshire, has taken four days to create. Pupils chose the 17-year-old as the woman who had most inspired them. They also helped the creators, art collective Sand In Your Eye, put the finishing touches to the portrait. Jamie Wardley, from the group, based in nearby Mytholmroyd, said: “Greta Thunberg has pioneered a global movement which…

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International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women, who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities. The world has made unprecedented advances, but no country has achieved gender equality. Fifty years ago, we landed on the moon; in the last decade, we discovered new human ancestors and photographed a black hole for the first time. In the meantime, legal restrictions have kept 2.7 billion women from…

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International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of their countries and communities. The theme of International Women’s Day 2020 is, I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights. The theme is aligned with UN Women’s new multigenerational campaign, Generation Equality, which marks the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive roadmap for the empowerment of women and…

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Our culture, our language, our history, and our values are vital to uniting us as a nation, as a people, and as the melting pot that we are. Nothing unites us more than a celebration of everything that is in that pot and one such celebration is Mashramani. Mashramani translates as “celebration after hard work” and it is a time where we as Guyanese take the time to go out into the streets and celebrate everything that truly makes us unique as a people. It is a time when we…

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By Utamu Belle The Mashramani celebration started when the Junior Chamber – Jaycees – of Mackenzie (a community that now constitutes part of Linden), who had been organising the country’s Independence celebrations since 1966, sought to have a ‘carnival-like’ festival to commemorate British Guiana gaining its Republican status in 1970. Chaired by popular West Indies cricketer the late Basil Butcher, the Jaycees Republic Committee was formed. It included members such as Jim Blackman, who was named Deputy to complete the task owing to Butcher being selected to the WI team…

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Guyana is a melting pot of cultures and every celebration takes on some part of that melting pot. It is no different with Mashramani since it is a time to showcase our unity as a people and truly live as “One People, One Nation, One Destiny”. This year, Mashramani is being observed under the theme, “Guyana Together; Reflect, Celebrate and Transform.” Mashramani is an Amerindian word which means “celebration after hard work”, and is usually observed on February 23 in observance of Guyana’s Republic status, which was achieved on that…

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