A great many of the current and growing small business enterprises in areas that include agro-processing, craft, clothing, fabric design and foods, to name a few, had their origins in initiatives undertaken by individuals and groups of women from poor rural communities searching for ways to subsidise modest existing incomes through one form or another of self-employment. There were instances, again, many of them, in which the particular skills involved in the various pursuits had to be learnt and even as that substantive learning process was ensuing there was the added task of learning how to run a business. The latter, in many cases, proved to be far more challenging than had been originally envisaged.
The gathering of more than 30 women comprising the Mahaica Women’s Group began to work together through force of circumstances. They had discovered, through community-based discourses that their respective situations dictated that they pick themselves up by their bootstraps and identify a line of business, all while sobered by the knowledge that their circumstances allowed no room for failure. That is how the Mahaica Women’s Group was created.
The experience of the manageress and ‘live wire’ of the group, Debbie Argyle, tells the story of the ‘place’ from which the group came. She bore ten children in what she said was a circumstance of poverty with hardships compelling her to focus unerringly on every opportunity that held the promise of positive change. She is a warm, talkative woman, who pursued Social Work studies at university whilst working as a sweeper/cleaner. It is not a past, however, that fazes her in the least. Today, she leads a group of women, some of whom are on their way to emerging from circumstances similar to hers. Amongst themselves they have developed a range of skills which, over time, they have transformed into business pursuits.
Setting aside the feeling of belonging and identity which the Mahaica Women’s Group has offered its members, it has served to foster a collective sense of self-belief that had previously been decidedly absent. The disciplines that they have learnt and which have offered them the option of still emerging entrepreneurial pursuits include disciplines in the craft, body beauty and the agro-processing range. A sense of their worthiness, arising out of the support that they have received from entities like the Guyana Office for Investment (GO-Invest) and the Sonia Noel-led Women in Business have provided them with a feeling of belonging while the still modest success that they have realised from exposure to public events here in Guyana, the Caribbean and the USA has persuaded Ms Argyle that the group is “getting there.”
The Mahaica Women’s Group may, at this juncture, comprise a small group of low profile micro-businesses but the owners believe that the likely changing circumstances of Guyana, as a whole, mean that they have a chance of growing. So gradual has their growth been that some of the women still benefit from sustenance support gestures provided by Food for the Poor. That being said, the consistent efforts that they make to prepare products for most of the local product display and promotion events, whether these are provided by the Guyana Marketing Corporation or the Small Business Bureau, is impressive.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the group has to do with the extent of the progress that it has made mostly through their own effort. From time to time this newspaper has met various members of the group all of whom welcome such practical support as they receive but all of whom appear to be prepared to go forward through ‘hard grind’ rather than through charity.
As far as we can tell (and we have said so before), local Business Support Organisations have no track record to speak about as far as reaching out to micro-businesses like those comprising the Mahaica Women’s Group. Debbie says that she thinks that should change. “There may be various ways in which they can help us,” she says.
The women comprising the Mahaica Women’s Group, Debbie says, feed off the energy of each other. Individuals within the group have acquired training in various fields and are now preoccupied with transforming those skills into economic ventures under a single umbrella. Over the years that they have been together they have enthusiastically embraced the organisational and procedural skills associated with the running of a business organisation. They are registered as a business and individuals within the group have learnt to work with those institutions that are critical to the fulfillment of their respective missions.
Debbie, whose own personal pursuit is the manufacture of scented and health-related soaps and candles flavoured with local fruit and herbs, is a practical woman. She believes that where success is an end objective, there is need for institutional support for organisations like the Mahaica Women’s Group, an organisation, she believes, which can play an important role in advancing the cause of poverty alleviation in Guyana.
