Dynamic Sociologist, Magda Fiona Griffith-Wills, is a ‘Special Person’

Apr 09, 2017 News

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“Once I set my mind on something, I will go for it. I am very strong-willed, but for me whatever I do I must have fun in it too. If I don’t enjoy it, I am not doing it.”

By Sharmain Grainger

Funny, friendly, dynamic and very strong-willed are just a few of the terms that can aptly describe

Magda Fiona Griffith-Wills. To many, she is just Fiona, but to all who have encountered her, she is undeniably a force to be reckoned with in just about any aspect of her life.
“Once I set my mind on something, I will go for it. I am very strong-willed, but for me whatever I do I must have fun in it too. If I don’t enjoy it, I am not doing it.”
Fiona has embraced this perspective over the years in her fervent quest to aid a national movement of youth development, a path she has been on for several years now.
Today, she proudly holds the title of Executive Director and co-founder of a youth development organisation – Specialists in Sustained Youth Development and Research Inc [SSYDR].
Fiona’s vision for youth development is as elaborate as it is thorough, thus it would be a near impossible task to obstruct the flow of this Pisces-born daughter of the soil.
But rewind to a few years earlier; she had no idea this was her destined forte.

EARLY YEARS
As the fourth of six children, Fiona was born on March 11, 1976 to parents Sherwin and Gloria Griffith. She grew up in the family home at Lamaha Street, Kitty, and remembers all too well her mother being at home doing the hard work of raising the children and taking care of the living quarters, while her father toiled in the world of work as the sole breadwinner. In fact, she recalled that he moved from the field of education to the insurance arena before finally opting for a career that caused him to uproot his entire family and move to St. Lucia.

At the time, Fiona was a 14-year-old student of The Bishops’ High School, who’d secured her primary education at Stella Maris Primary.
Although it wasn’t the easiest task, she was required to adapt to a new way of life in the Eastern Caribbean nation.
“It was interesting there. One of the things that struck me was that it was not home. There were some persons who tried to make it welcoming, but this was at a point in time when St. Lucians saw Guyanese as people who were coming to take away their employment,” Fiona recounted.
She truly didn’t see St. Lucia as home, despite her parents’ claims that the family had an improved financial situation.
“I eventually learnt to love St. Lucia, but I loved Guyana even more,” Fiona related. But her burgeoning love for the land of her birth could in fact be likened to a gradual metamorphosis.
It all happened years after she’d completed secondary school and had taught for one year at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St. Lucia. She had started to caress the idea of attending the University of Guyana [UG], like one of her siblings did, although she could have easily gained access to the University of the West Indies with her ‘A’ level passes.

Fiona returned to Guyana with the intention of doing law, but was swayed into Sociology because of her religious beliefs.
“I thought if I studied law and became a lawyer I would have had to lie and do all sorts of silly things, but I had done Sociology at ‘A’ levels and found it interesting…people interested me. From an early age, I would always analyse all the behaviours around me. I just had to understand people’s behaviour in society…this was just a fascination for me,” she recounted.
It was a natural move for the young Fiona to study Sociology. In fact it might have been because of her passion for the study of social behaviour that she was convinced that “I had the best set of lecturers…my mentor up to a date like today was Professor George Kenford Danns.
I met people like Freddie Kissoon and there were so many others…they were wonderful people.”
After completing her Sociology Degree in three years with a distinction, Fiona soon after pursued a Masters Degree. For this, she remembers doing a great deal of research focused on ‘the boy child in Guyana,’ alongside Brenda Gill.
She recalled drawing her enthusiasm for research and a spirit of entrepreneurship from Professor Danns. “I think anybody who would have interacted with Professor Danns would have started thinking entrepreneurship,” Fiona related.
Also helping to shape her into the person she is today, was the brief stint she spent at the

United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) where she worked on an Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Project. There she worked closely with Dr. Wendy Rudder.

CHANGING COURSE
As fate would have it, Fiona decided to return to St. Lucia in order to build a family of her own. You see, she had gotten married and a child was on the way and like her father, she was convinced it would be financially easier to make ends meet there.
After giving birth to her first child she was on her way back to a teaching profession. It was at a top all-boys school, St. Mary’s College, where she was tasked with teaching Music and English. Although at the time she enjoyed teaching her classes, it wasn’t really what she wanted to do. “Teaching was nice, I liked the interaction, but it really wasn’t me. I think because my area of study was Sociology, I didn’t find teaching a subject like English, for instance, the easiest of things,” Fiona recalled.
She, however, never skipped a beat in making her Music lessons fun. In fact, some of her students are today professionals in the music industry because of the foundation they had. Fiona was instrumental in encouraging the principal of the school at which she taught to incorporate a feature called Tal-Fest. She’d learnt of Tal-Fest while studying at the University of Guyana which basically was a festival that showcased the talent of students.

“The principal loved the idea of this talent festival. We went around to various businesses and we got funding. I can’t remember how much money was made, but we made a lot of money, and to this day Tal-Fest continues,” disclosed Fiona, as she spoke glowingly of the initiative.
She continued teaching for about three-and-a-half years in St. Lucia until an opportunity presented itself for her to lecture at the University of Guyana.
This, of course, was influenced by Professor Danns, who wanted her to delve back into things research.
“During my time at UG, I did a number of research papers, and I totally loved lecturing too, especially the interaction part of it,” Fiona reminisced. Although she started off as a Lecturer One, at one point she was required to function in the capacity of Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences.
She later ventured over to the Catholic Relief Services, an international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States, which at the time had in place here a Trafficking in Persons programme. Fiona was tasked with being the Programme Manager, and in doing this, her interest for people heightened, especially those who were found to be vulnerable.

DESTINY CALLS
But her real calling might have started to unfold when she joined forces, though on a part-time
basis, with the Educational Development Centre [EDC] as a Juvenile Justice and Gender Specialist. In this capacity, she was able to assist in doing the research and subsequent design of the Skills and Knowledge for Youth Employment (SKYE) Guyana project.
The USAID SKYE Project was designed to strengthen youths’ access to justice, while simultaneously equipping them with market-driven skills and attitudes to improve their ability to transition to the workforce. This was definitely something that considerably aroused Fiona’s interest. It wasn’t long after that the EDC decided to offer her the full-time position of Deputy Chief of Party. She later became the Chief of Party.
“I always knew I loved the work that we were doing, but I never really envisaged being the Chief of Party and more so because the Chiefs of Party are usually ex-pats, persons from the international community…but I did it until the project came to an end,” Fiona recalled.
Over the five-year period of the project which attracted several extensions, hundreds of youths were trained. According to Fiona, “we were able to train 2,200-plus youths…we would have worked with 3,000 and a bit more youths in varying ways. Of the 2,200 we would have trained, 169 of them were able to start their own businesses.”
Based on a survey done in December for the Ministry of Communities, it was revealed that over 94 percent of these businesses are still active.
During the life of the SKYE project too, Fiona disclosed that 1,000-plus youths were linked to employment.
“We had conducted an employers’ satisfaction survey and there was a rating of 95 percent satisfaction from employers who employed our SKYE youths…simply because of the methodology we used, the curricula we used…we were successful,” Fiona boasted.
It is her opinion that each youth who was given an alternative sentence through probation to the SKYE project was a success story.
“We knew from talking with Magistrates their interest was not to send these youths to the New Opportunity Corps [NOC],” said Fiona, as she disclosed that a portion of the youths who benefited from the SKYE Project were in fact delinquents who were given a chance to redeem themselves.
“We would have had 131 youths come to us through the courts, and then we would have had another group of youths who would have come to us through the NOC,” related Fiona, as she disclosed that the SKYE project also had in place coaches who helped to reintegrate the youths back into the society.
But there were other coaches who went into communities and found vulnerable youths who needed help. “We have done a lot for youths in Guyana. We have worked in Regions Three, Four, Five, Six and Nine at one point in time, and in Region 10 and at the NOC where we had staff stationed,” Fiona recounted.
Her managing and working on such projects gave her a keen passion to want to see the end result, and thus enabled her to chart the best possible way forward to get there.
“The key is always getting everybody’s buy-in. So for me, once I am enthusiastic about it you’re going to know.”
But for Fiona, indulging in even the best designed project would be a flawed move if it lacks an element of fun. “For me everything that I do, I have to find fun in it,” said Fiona, who has constantly shared this notion with her children, Koby and Kaydene. In fact she prides herself with adopting an unconventional style of raising her children, whereby it is more interactive and frank rather than domineering.
However, even with her methods of doing things, the SKYE project was subjected to limited funding and eventually came to an end in 2014. But according to Fiona, she along with a few others simply did not accept that such a crucial programme should come to an end because of diminished funding.

RENEWED VISION
Shortly before the USAID SKYE project officially closed its doors in 2016, our ‘Special Person’ along with Dale Erskine, Rawle Dundas and Karen Raphael decided that they would continue the work.
“We couldn’t see that with the ending of a funding that work should stop with regards to at-risk youths, alternative sentencing and youths being linked to livelihood opportunities. It just felt totally wrong to let it go. So we sat together and decided we had to do something,” Fiona reflected.
The outcome of that tactical move was the formation of SSYDR.
Their idea was not only endorsed by the EDC but was well supported too. In addition to sharing expertise with the fledgling organisation, the EDC also ensured that all of the furniture of the SKYE Project was gifted to SSYDR.
“We felt pretty blessed in it all. We felt that it was the right place to be because the doors just kept opening…it just felt natural,” Fiona noted.
She currently has in place an elaborate vision that includes various income-generating measures that would be within legal limits for the evolving not-for-profit organisation.
“Our interest, outside of continuing to seek out projects and funding, is to be able to sustain ourselves. We don’t want to be the organisation that is going to be forever dependent on donor or even Government resources. We want to be able to always have an organisation that youths can know that they can come to at anytime,” Fiona emphasised.
SSYDR has been collaborating with the courts, the Ministries of Social Protection, Education and Legal Affairs, and has been in talks with the Ministry of Agriculture, but the essence of its success thus far has been linked to the fact that it has at its helm a dedicated and focus-driven leader like Magda Fiona Griffith-Wills.

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