RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Just hours be­fore the ar­rival of a Unit­ed States war­ship in Trinidad amid ris­ing ten­sions be­tween Venezuela and the US, Se­nior Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Co­or­di­na­tor at the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Jer­ry David, posed a sober­ing ques­tion to Red Cross vol­un­teers: “Are you ready to help in times of con­flict?”

Speak­ing at the re­open­ing of the South Trinidad Branch of the Red Cross in San Fer­nan­do on Sat­ur­day evening, David sought to put the new­ly mint­ed mem­bers on alert about us­ing their train­ing.

“Get­ting vol­un­teers is dif­fi­cult,” David ad­mit­ted. “Get­ting vol­un­teers to come out and re­spond is even hard­er. The train­ing, the eu­pho­ria, the cer­tifi­cates — all that’s nice, peo­ple like that. But when we have to ask peo­ple to re­spond… that’s where the re­al test be­gins.”

David chal­lenged at­ten­dees to re­flect on the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s pre­pared­ness, not just in lo­gis­tics but in emo­tion­al re­silience.

“What would be the role of the Red Cross should there be con­flict be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, and Trinidad and To­ba­go has to take the fall­out?” he asked.

“How many of you have ac­tu­al­ly seen dead bod­ies? Few have. There’s a psy­cho­log­i­cal cost to vol­un­teerism that we must be ready to bear,” he warned.

David re­called his own dif­fi­cult ex­pe­ri­ences wit­ness­ing vi­o­lence in his com­mu­ni­ty — mo­ments that shaped his un­der­stand­ing of what true re­sponse work re­quires.

“When I used to see shoot­ings in my coun­try, I’d just go and watch un­til the po­lice came,” he said. “They were al­ready gone — noth­ing I could do. But I need­ed to un­der­stand what that re­al­i­ty looked like. You have to be men­tal­ly ready for that kind of work,” he said.

De­spite the grav­i­ty of his words, David urged the Red Cross to fo­cus on prepa­ra­tion and part­ner­ship.

“The Red Cross is known world­wide for go­ing where oth­ers won’t,” he said. “While every­one is run­ning away, they’re run­ning in — car­ry­ing stretch­ers, bring­ing re­lief. That’s the spir­it we have to cul­ti­vate here in South Trinidad.”

He com­mend­ed the re­open­ing of the South Branch as a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in strength­en­ing na­tion­al re­silience.

Mean­while, Ed­ward Mood­ie, Pres­i­dent of the Sus­tain­able Cli­mate Re­silience Ini­tia­tive and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Cross, said he was pleased about the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s re­new­al af­ter years of stag­na­tion.

“The Red Cross has been closed for too long,” Mood­ie said. “When I was elect­ed, I lis­tened to those who were dis­en­chant­ed, those who had giv­en up hope. And I told my­self — there’s on­ly one way for­ward: to en­gage, to hold hands, and to walk to­geth­er with every­one who has served be­fore and every­one who will come to serve now.”

Mood­ie de­scribed the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s re­vival as a jour­ney from “dark­ness in­to light,” sym­bol­i­cal­ly tied to the tim­ing of Di­vali.

“Over the last few years, work­ing with the peo­ple of Wood­land, I re­alised we were in dark­ness. Our build­ing was closed; our spir­it was dimmed. But Di­vali was just days away — and it re­mind­ed me that in Trinidad, every­one cel­e­brates each oth­er’s light. We are now step­ping in­to that light with re­silience born out of strug­gle.”

He em­pha­sized that the new Red Cross is root­ed in uni­ty, cul­ture, and com­pas­sion.

In De­cem­ber 2024, an In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of the Red Cross re­port con­clud­ed that the TTRCS was not func­tion­ing prop­er­ly and faced se­ri­ous man­age­ment, fi­nan­cial, and gov­er­nance chal­lenges. The fol­low­ing month, the then gov­ern­ment sus­pend­ed the so­ci­ety’s $730,000 an­nu­al sub­ven­tion due to out­stand­ing au­dits.

Mood­ie, who was elect­ed in Au­gust, said the new ex­ec­u­tive plans to part­ner with cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go to host health fairs and Com­mu­ni­ty Emer­gency Re­sponse Team (CERT) train­ing across the coun­try.