Category: Features

Enjoy incredible grass-root experiences and fall in love with Guyana. The country’s true ethos can be felt in the many community-based tourism initiatives, where villages have pooled their resources and come together to invest in tourism as one of their main sources of income. Guyana is a leading pioneer in community driven, owned and led tourism in the Caribbean and South American Regions. Stay in villages eco-lodges, have meaningful interactions during hikes and river trips, and learn about the rhythm of life of the indigenous Peoples of Guyana. Your experiences…

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When construction worker Lawrence Braithwaite lost his sight to glaucoma in 2007, the road ahead was a prospect filled with misgivings and uncertainty. He had to find something else to do to make money and maintain his family. Little did he know that he was about to embark on a new path in life that would lead him to overcome immense challenges, achieve triumphs and become an admired entrepreneur with innovative products produced under the company name Braf’s Manufacturing. Looking back on how it all started, Lawrence remembers being told…

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Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) targets the immune system and weakens the defence systems against infections and some types of cancer. As the virus destroys and impairs the function of immune system cells, infected individuals gradually become immunodeficient. Immune function is typically measured by CD4 cell count. HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, having claimed more than 32 million lives so far. By the end of 2018 there were 37.9 million people living with HIV. Due to gaps in HIV services, 770 000 people died from HIV-related…

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Advent is the period of four Sundays and weeks before Christmas (or sometimes from the 1st December to Christmas Day!). Advent means ‘Coming’ in Latin. This is the coming of Jesus into the world. Christians use the four Sundays and weeks of Advent to prepare and remember the real meaning of Christmas. There are three meanings of ‘coming’ that Christians describe in Advent. The first, and most thought of, happened about 2000 years ago when Jesus came into the world as a baby to live as a man and die…

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By Lakhram Bhagirat Guyana’s premier Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) activist group, the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) is starting its own movement in the fight against the spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in Guyana. SASOD has been advocating for the introduction of Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), to the most at-risk group – the LGBT community, for over three years now. However, very little has been done in that time, causing the organisation to start its own movement with the introduction of the critical medicine. SASOD’s Managing Director, Joel…

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  Tourism in Guyana’s southern Rupununi region has long been a small business aimed at foreign visitors. But growing demand for experiences that mix wildlife watching with cultural activities is creating opportunities of benefit to local communities. Now a purring economic engine, the industry not only creates jobs in rural villages where employment opportunities are scarce, but it also provides incentives to protect birds and other animals that visitors will pay to see, such as giant otters, giant anteaters and jaguars. “With the spread of community-based tourism and the increased…

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Foster care can be defined as the act of rearing a child who is not your biological or adopted child. It involves providing for the daily needs and care of the child, creating a family environment that offers supervision, guidance, nurturing and discipline, in the same way as you would for your biological child. Most Guyanese will know of or have been in a home, where taking care of a relative’s or neighbour’s child has taken place. This practice of choosing a substitute family to perform the functions of biological…

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The Pilgrims, looking for religious and civil liberty, left Plymouth, England on September 6, 1620. They braved the stormy seas for over two months before land was in sight where they arrived in Massachusetts in late November (1620). On December 11, after disembarking at Plymouth Rock, they signed the Mayflower Compact, known as America’s first document of civil/self government. Trying to build shelters in their new homeland, they were still unprepared for the harsh New England winter, and due to starvation and sickness, nearly half of them died before the…

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