Fay­ola K J Fras­er

De­fend­er. Pro­tec­tor. Cham­pi­on. All are poignant ways to de­scribe ANSA McAL Lau­re­ate Dr Ay­o­dele Dal­gety-Dean who has spent a decade serv­ing Guyanese women, chil­dren, and mi­grants.

She has a di­verse back­ground in var­i­ous fields span­ning fi­nance, fam­i­ly ther­a­py, and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice.

As the founder of the NGO Blos­som Inc she cham­pi­ons the work to pre­vent and re­spond to sex­u­al and gen­der-based vi­o­lence against women and chil­dren.

With three chil­dren of her own, Dal­gety-Dean has man­aged to grace­ful­ly nav­i­gate the chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances of her work while rais­ing a fam­i­ly as a de­vot­ed wife and moth­er.

Born and raised in Guyana, her fam­i­ly mi­grat­ed to the UK in 1990 to al­low her and her sib­lings to pur­sue op­por­tu­ni­ties in ed­u­ca­tion. Dal­gety-Dean grad­u­at­ed with an un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree in Pol­i­tics and a post­grad­u­ate de­gree in Sys­temic Prac­tice with Chil­dren and Fam­i­lies, which was the ce­ment­ing of her in­ter­est in her even­tu­al ca­reer.

She tran­si­tioned from her first ca­reer as a fi­nance an­a­lyst, which she re­alised “just wasn’t for me,” to be­come a fam­i­ly ther­a­pist and project man­ag­er, lead­ing pro­grammes for fam­i­lies in chal­leng­ing cir­cum­stances. In 2008, when Dal­gety-Dean and her hus­band were con­sid­er­ing leav­ing the UK, her hus­band was of­fered a job in his sec­tor as the fi­nan­cial comp­trol­ler of a com­pa­ny in her na­tive Guyana.

Up­on re­turn­ing to her coun­try, they start­ed a fam­i­ly. While set­tling in­to her new role as a moth­er, she found she was “a busy­body; I couldn’t just stay home, so I got in­volved in boards for or­gan­i­sa­tions that dealt with adop­tion and child pro­tec­tion.”

In 2014, she was in­vit­ed to col­lab­o­rate with the Child Pro­tec­tion Agency in Guyana to ex­e­cute spe­cial­ist work to deal with child sex­u­al abuse, and she found the time ripe to set up her NGO, Blos­som Inc.

Blos­som Inc was found­ed with two main goals: to sup­port the Child Care and Pro­tec­tion Agency in Guyana and to sup­port chil­dren and fam­i­lies af­fect­ed by trau­ma. The need for the NGO de­vel­oped fol­low­ing the nu­mer­ous con­ver­sa­tions that Dal­gety-Dean had with pro­fes­sion­als, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, fam­i­lies, and chil­dren, which brought to light the trau­ma and trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ences that were a part of peo­ple’s every­day lives.

Blos­som Inc of­fers chil­dren and fam­i­lies five main ser­vices out of their Child Ad­vo­ca­cy Cen­tres lo­cat­ed in var­i­ous re­gions across Guyana, in­clud­ing foren­sic in­ter­views, trau­ma-fo­cused ther­a­py, vic­tim coach­ing and sup­port ser­vices, ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach, and mi­grant sup­port. Ac­cord­ing to Dal­gety-Dean, foren­sic in­ter­views are a “de­vel­op­men­tal­ly sound way of speak­ing to chil­dren about what has hap­pened to them. We take their state­ment fol­low­ing an in­stance of abuse, and we al­so gath­er the facts of what hap­pened for the po­lice, Child Pro­tec­tion Agency, and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.”

Their trau­ma-fo­cused ther­a­py ser­vices of­fer coun­selling to chil­dren based on a trau­ma-based cog­ni­tive ther­a­py mod­el, which sup­ports them in build­ing cop­ing mech­a­nisms fol­low­ing in­stances of abuse.

The vic­tim coach­ing and sup­port ser­vices of­fer sup­port through the crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion and tri­al pro­ce­dure, of­fer­ing fam­i­lies in­for­ma­tion about the process and what they can ex­pect and act­ing as a li­ai­son be­tween the courts and the fam­i­ly.

The ed­u­ca­tion and out­reach arm fo­cus­es on work­shops that aim to break harm­ful so­cial norms by rais­ing aware­ness about pre­ven­tion and ed­u­ca­tion on gen­der-based vi­o­lence as well as sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive rights. For mi­grant chil­dren, the fo­cus is not on­ly on child pro­tec­tion from ne­glect and sex­u­al abuse but al­so on in­cor­po­rat­ing trans­la­tion ser­vices and sup­port for chil­dren to en­ter the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and ac­cess pub­lic ser­vices.

How does she strike the bal­ance be­tween car­ing for so many chil­dren and car­ing for her­self and her fam­i­ly? “There were a few mad years be­tween fin­ish­ing my PhD, car­ing for my son who is autis­tic, and grow­ing and ex­pand­ing Blos­som,” she laughs. Her sup­port net­work has held her up, and she in­sists that hav­ing “great peo­ple in your life that you can talk to is key.”

The joys of see­ing her chil­dren, now 17, 15, and eight, grow and blos­som have fu­elled her, and she de­scribes both her hus­band and chil­dren as “the lights of my life.” How­ev­er, the chal­lenges in the field abound. Dal­gety-Dean cites fund­ing as a ma­jor hur­dle, as she on­ly seeks part­ner­ships that align with the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s ethos, re­fus­ing to com­pro­mise her in­tegri­ty.

As Guyana has a pop­u­la­tion of around 834,000 with lim­it­ed re­sources, the fund­ing to share be­tween NGOs is lim­it­ed. In 2019, she was able to get the Gov­ern­ment on board, al­low­ing Blos­som to be­come a sub­ven­tion agency, with a large chunk of its fund­ing com­ing from the Gov­ern­ment. Be­ing able to at­tract Unit­ed Na­tions fund­ing from var­i­ous agen­cies has been a high­light and al­lowed her to touch more lives with her work.

As more cas­es of child ex­ploita­tion and abuse are be­ing re­port­ed, Dal­gety-Dean does not con­sid­er this a fail­ure, as “the more ed­u­ca­tion we do, the re­port­ing in­creas­es, and ac­cess to jus­tice gets bet­ter.” She feels pride that Blos­som was at the fore­front of ad­vo­ca­cy for the Sex­u­al Of­fences Court in Guyana, of which there are now three, which are spe­cialised courts par­al­lel to the reg­u­lar courts to get mat­ters of child sex­u­al abuse through the court sys­tem faster.

An ad­vo­cate at her core, she us­es her in­creas­ing reach and plat­form to call for a cul­tur­al shift in Caribbean fam­i­ly life, en­cour­ag­ing par­ents to break the cy­cle of not lis­ten­ing to their chil­dren.

“You have to be a par­ent, but you have to cre­ate a re­la­tion­ship where you are their go-to per­son. Build an open­ness where they can talk to you about any­thing. That is a ma­jor pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure to dis­rupt cy­cles of abuse.”

She sug­gest­ed that par­ents look keen­ly at their child for signs of abuse—sud­den changes in a child’s be­hav­iour, bed­wet­ting, and re­sis­tance to a par­tic­u­lar per­son or ac­tiv­i­ty. On a so­ci­etal lev­el, she called for wide­spread ed­u­ca­tion on sex, de­mys­ti­fy­ing sex­u­al and re­pro­duc­tive ac­tiv­i­ty and get­ting rid of harm­ful so­cial norms.

A re­mark­able fig­ure in the sphere of so­cial work in the Caribbean, Ay­o­dele Da­gle­ty-Dean is a de­serv­ing re­cip­i­ent of the ANSA McAL Lau­re­ate Award.

Ever hum­ble, she con­sid­ers the award “not on­ly a per­son­al mile­stone but a trib­ute to the stead­fast re­silience of my team and Blos­som. My team works so hard, and this is the boost we need.”

Her un­wa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion to the chil­dren of Guyana, to her com­mu­ni­ty, and ser­vice to the wider re­gion con­tin­ue to cre­ate a safer en­vi­ron­ment and fos­ter a cul­ture of care and sup­port in our com­mu­ni­ties.