Men who are se­cret­ly strug­gling with stress, de­pres­sion or oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing men­tal health can reach out to the Ro­tary Club of Port-of-Spain West. Re­cent­ly-elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the Club, Sonya Phillip and her team are part­ner­ing with men­tal health ex­perts to help trou­bled males work out their prob­lems through CALM.

A three-part project, CALM will build on the men­tal health theme start­ed un­der the pre­vi­ous pres­i­dent, Veron­i­ca De Souza-Phillip, in 2018. In its first ini­tia­tive, the Port-of-Spain West Club has start­ed re­fur­bish­ing Ward 1 of the St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal via a grant from the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion, Phillip in­formed Guardian Me­dia re­cent­ly.

The project’s sec­ond phase, “Man Talk”, was ex­pect­ed to be launched from Oc­to­ber 10 to co­in­cide with World Men­tal Health Day. Ac­cord­ing to Phillip, “Man Talk” aims to cre­ate a safe space where men of all ages can speak up about is­sues af­fect­ing them and will take the form of taped in­ter­views, videos and pan­el dis­cus­sions over so­cial me­dia plat­forms, Face­book, In­sta­gram and YouTube. Men can sign up on Face­book@ro­tary­poswest, IG@ ro­tary­poswest or email ro­taryclub­poswest@gmail.com to par­tic­i­pate.

Phillip said that aris­ing out of the fo­rum, par­tic­i­pants and men in gen­er­al who felt they need­ed one-on-one ad­vice from psy­chol­o­gists, ther­a­pists ecould tap in­to part three of the project, the Men­tal Health Time Rais­er. A twist on a tra­di­tion­al fundrais­er which may not be fea­si­ble giv­en the eco­nom­ic ef­fect of COVID-19, the Time Rais­er ini­tia­tive asks pro­fes­sion­als to pledge eight hours of their time for the next eight months to as­sist males in cri­sis.

Phillip, who is al­so the vice-prin­ci­pal (Ag) of the Diego Mar­tin North Sec­ondary School, said the club con­sult­ed well-known psy­chi­a­trist and sports coach, Dr Ian Hy­po­lite and med­ical di­rec­tor of the St Ann's Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal, Dr Samuel Shafe, af­ter de­cid­ing to make men their fo­cus.

“Com­ing out of our men­tal health project in 2018 which taught teach­ers, guid­ance coun­sel­lors, par­ents and oth­er stake­hold­ers in ed­u­ca­tion how to recog­nise sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies in teenagers, and be­ing in a po­si­tion where you have charge over young men and women, you see a need to guide the way in which they think and op­er­ate in so­ci­ety.

“We al­so saw so many dis­turb­ing ar­ti­cles com­ing out in the me­dia where women were be­ing at­tacked and found no em­pha­sis was be­ing placed on the men­tal health of men,” Phillip ex­plained.

Phillip be­came the third fe­male pres­i­dent of the Port-of-Spain West Club since it was first es­tab­lished in 1976, af­ter Vin­dra Amar and Veron­i­ca De Souza-Phillip. Her term start­ed on Ju­ly 1 this year and will run un­til June 30, 2021. Point­ing out that the Ro­tary usu­al­ly at­tract­ed busi­ness-ori­ent­ed peo­ple and pro­fes­sion­als who want­ed to give back to their com­mu­ni­ty, Phillip said there was no short­age of women in­volved in Ro­tary. Not­ing that “as a woman in 2020 you have to be in­no­v­a­tive, strong and some­one on whom oth­ers can de­pend,” she said clubs had no prob­lem en­sur­ing the eq­ui­table dis­tri­b­u­tion of lead­er­ship among males and fe­males.

Phillip said her in­volve­ment in Ro­tary was a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion as she was raised in Diego Mar­tin in a lov­ing fam­i­ly and was al­ways sur­round­ed by rel­a­tives who felt a de­sire to help oth­ers.

The hold­er of a BA in His­to­ry and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, a Diplo­ma in Ed­u­ca­tion and a Mas­ters in Ed­u­ca­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy, Phillip be­gan her Ro­tary ca­reer at the age of 22 when she joined the Ro­taract–the youth arm of Ro­tary con­sist­ing of 18 to 30-year-olds–af­ter be­ing in­vit­ed by a friend. She saip since then she has been ex­posed to like-mind­ed peo­ple the world over.

“The Ro­tary fam­i­ly opened up the world to me. I was able to see that many peo­ple through­out the world, the Caribbean, Trinidad and To­ba­go are so keen on serv­ing and giv­ing back to their com­mu­ni­ties. It’s some­thing we should re­al­ly build on as a na­tion.”

As a Ro­tarac­tar­i­an, she helped re­fur­bish the down­town mu­se­um on South Quay through a gov­ern­ment grant and went on to serve as pres­i­dent of the Ro­taract Club of Port-of-Spain West for ten years.

With­in the last three years Phillip has par­tic­i­pat­ed in her Ro­tary Club’s Care Out­reach Pro­gramme of Ed­u­ca­tion (COPE) project which helped train health work­ers of the NWRHA and par­ents with autis­tic chil­dren to iden­ti­fy and deal with autism.

Telethon 2020 in May, which gained do­na­tions for ten so­ci­eties, and ham­per dis­tri­b­u­tions for the past six months, form part of the Club’s ac­tiv­i­ties for this year.

Un­der Phillip’s lead­er­ship, sev­en years ago, many of her stu­dents be­came in­volved in the Port-of-Spain West branch of the In­ter­act Club, which con­sists of ju­nior mem­bers from ages 12 to 18. They launched the Each One Feed One project which con­tin­ues to do­nate canned food items to the Di­a­mond Vale com­mu­ni­ty.

Phillip said the next ven­ture of the Ro­tary Club of Port-of-Spain West will be GROW FIT, aimed at pro­mot­ing the phys­i­cal health of chil­dren, es­pe­cial­ly since they are stuck at home dur­ing COVID.

“I would like when oth­ers think about ser­vice they think about the Ro­tary and when they think about the Ro­tary, they think about the Ro­tary Club of Port-of-Spain West,” Phillip said.