Fay­ola Fras­er

Civ­il so­ci­ety in Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ways been dri­ven by pas­sion, and NGO Veni Ap­waan was born out of a clear-eyed un­der­stand­ing that pas­sion alone is not enough. At a time when com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions were de­liv­er­ing vi­tal ser­vices with lim­it­ed sys­tems, train­ing, or sup­port, Veni Ap­waan emerged to pro­fes­sion­alise the sec­tor from the in­side out.

More than two decades lat­er, that found­ing vi­sion has evolved in­to a na­tion­al move­ment for ac­count­abil­i­ty, col­lab­o­ra­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, now pow­er­ful­ly ex­pressed through ini­tia­tives like the IG­NITE CSOs Mi­cro-Cre­den­tial Schol­ar­ship Pro­gramme, which, in part­ner­ship with the Crop­per Foun­da­tion, is equip­ping hun­dreds of or­gan­i­sa­tions with prac­ti­cal skills, recog­nised cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the tools need­ed to earn pub­lic trust and thrive in­to the fu­ture.

Veni Ap­waan’s mean­ing, both “come and learn” and “come and teach” in Cre­ole, seeks to ap­proach strength­en­ing civ­il so­ci­ety with a strong spir­it in part­ner­ship both with­in and be­yond the non-prof­it sec­tor. Un­der strong lead­er­ship, in­clud­ing found­ing mem­ber and chair­man San­dra Pyke-An­tho­ny and board sec­re­tary Colleen Davis, the or­gan­i­sa­tion has po­si­tioned it­self to cham­pi­on and fa­cil­i­tate the em­pow­er­ment of Caribbean CSOs. Fol­low­ing a year-long lead­er­ship train­ing pro­gramme host­ed by the In­sti­tute of Busi­ness in 2001-2002, 30 NGO lead­ers were trained on var­i­ous as­pects of run­ning a civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tion. Ten of them made a piv­otal de­ci­sion: the train­ing would not sit on a shelf. In­stead, it would be­come the foun­da­tion of a new or­gan­i­sa­tion, one root­ed in shared learn­ing and col­lec­tive ac­tion.

Teach­ing and learn­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and mu­tu­al re­spect be­came its guid­ing val­ues. From the out­set, Veni Ap­waan un­der­stood a key truth about civ­il so­ci­ety: pas­sion alone does not strength­en in­sti­tu­tions. Sus­tain­able im­pact re­quires sys­tems, skills, ac­count­abil­i­ty, and the abil­i­ty to work to­geth­er.

This un­der­stand­ing evolved in­to four clear pil­lars of work: ca­pac­i­ty build­ing, in­ter­nal or­gan­i­sa­tion­al strength­en­ing, re­search, and ad­vo­ca­cy. While train­ing has al­ways been cen­tral, Veni Ap­waan has in­creas­ing­ly leaned in­to ad­vo­ca­cy over the past decade, work­ing col­lec­tive­ly to ex­pand the civic par­tic­i­pa­tion space and cre­ate an en­abling en­vi­ron­ment for civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions (CSOs). A no­table ex­am­ple came in 2015, when Veni Ap­waan was rec­om­mend­ed to act as a re­source for the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion, sup­port­ing a Cab­i­net note that ul­ti­mate­ly al­lowed for 100 per cent sub­sidi­s­a­tion of On-the-Job Train­ing (OJT) stipends for NGOs, re­mov­ing a ma­jor fi­nan­cial bar­ri­er to par­tic­i­pa­tion for civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Be­tween 2017 and 2020, Veni Ap­waan deep­ened its con­ven­ing role with­in the sec­tor, in­clud­ing host­ing the NGO Pro­fes­sion­al Con­fer­ence with sup­port from donors such as the JB Fer­nan­des Trust. These gath­er­ings brought 75 to 100 NGOs in­to the same space, some­times for the first time, to build skills, ex­change ideas, and form mean­ing­ful part­ner­ships. Im­por­tant­ly, donors were al­so brought to the ta­ble, fos­ter­ing di­a­logue and trust be­tween fun­ders and im­ple­menters.

In sub­se­quent years, Veni Ap­waan con­tin­ued to re­spond to na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties. A 2021 project with The Crop­per Foun­da­tion in­creased civ­il so­ci­ety’s un­der­stand­ing of na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal agree­ments, recog­nis­ing that much CSO work di­rect­ly sup­ports Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­ter­na­tion­al com­mit­ments. Fif­teen CSOs were trained, with strong en­gage­ment from in­sti­tu­tions such as the Green Fund, help­ing to de­mys­ti­fy fund­ing process­es and im­prove ac­cess.

To­day, Veni Ap­waan stands at the cen­tre of a new phase of sec­tor de­vel­op­ment through ini­tia­tives like the IG­NITE CSOs project, led by Pyke-An­tho­ny and Davis in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Crop­per Foun­da­tion and with sup­port from the Eu­ro­pean Union. With a strong em­pha­sis on ac­count­abil­i­ty, gov­er­nance, and fu­ture readi­ness, Veni Ap­waan and Crop­per are seek­ing to help CSOs stan­dard­ise sys­tems that demon­strate trans­paren­cy and im­pact. From de­vel­op­ing the Na­tion­al Ac­count­abil­i­ty Frame­work to rolling out ac­ces­si­ble mi­cro-cre­den­tials in gov­er­nance and man­age­ment, Veni Ap­waan con­tin­ues to live up to its name, invit­ing civ­il so­ci­ety to come, learn, teach, and build a stronger fu­ture to­geth­er.

This Mi­cro-Cre­den­tial Schol­ar­ship Pro­gramme is a na­tion­al ini­tia­tive de­signed to make ac­count­abil­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment ac­ces­si­ble to or­gan­i­sa­tions across the sec­tor. De­liv­ered through flex­i­ble e-learn­ing, the pro­gramme of­fers in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised mi­cro-cre­den­tials in gov­er­nance, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment, project man­age­ment and hu­man re­source man­age­ment, is­sued to both par­tic­i­pants and their or­gan­i­sa­tions. All CSOs—whether now emerg­ing or well-es­tab­lished—are in­vit­ed to ap­ply, en­sur­ing in­clu­sion rather than ex­clu­sion. Sup­port­ed by prac­ti­cal tools such as self-as­sess­ment in­stru­ments, tech­ni­cal clin­ics and shared or­gan­i­sa­tion­al re­sources, the schol­ar­ship pro­gramme re­flects Veni Ap­waan’s long-held be­lief that pas­sion must be matched with sys­tems, skills and trust to sus­tain civ­il so­ci­ety’s im­pact well in­to the fu­ture.