Sidetracked from her hoped-for trajectory of becoming a doctor, Pearlita Richardson stepped into the classroom as a teacher and immediately realised her career journey would be different. Today she is not a teacher but her time in the classroom saw her zeroing on the needs of girls and women and as a businesswoman designing clothes and other items she has not wavered.
“I went into teaching and from my very first day in the classroom I realised that I wanted to do something for children… I grew up in a very loving home and I have very supportive parents and when I met the girls in the classroom I realised immediately that their family lives were not as supportive and I saw all the different ways they were affected,” she said in a recent interview with this newspaper.
It was this need that resulted in her starting an after school initiative for school-aged girls at the Plaisance Secondary School in 2015 where she taught English, Social Studies and Agriculture Science. Initially, the initiative was confined to that school but it later expanded to two others. The girls were taught life skills, arts and crafts and other things that they could have taken beyond the classroom such as self-worth and self-value.
“I looked at them and I looked at the environment and I felt that they needed something more and so I started the after-school programme,” she said.
She said she realised her “purpose” was working with women and youths.
Richardson recalled that she had started to attend university to pursue a degree in Biology with the aim of moving to medicine but this did not work out for her financially. She turned to teaching to “kind of move forward with life and in teaching I found my purpose in working with girls”.
La Vie Guyana
It was from this initiative that her business La Vie Guyana (not initially the same name) was born as she saw the need to generate funds to keep the initiative going and decided to venture into designing.
While that is how she started “selling clothing”, she recalled that she first tried her hands at designing when she was about 14. She had designed, made and worn her own tote-styled backpack. Later, she purchased a sewing machine. Today she owns three sewing machines and works along with other sewers as well.
Richardson said she used a lot of social media to market her products, which not only included clothing but bags and purses. “I just kind of got creative with it and did the stuff that I did,” she added.
Richardson has since relocated to Skeldon, Berbice, where she grew up, after two years of the programme as she realised being a teacher in the classroom meant that she could not have as much impact on the lives of women and girls as she wanted.
“And really that is my core area of focus, advocacy for women and girls, that’s what I do mainly. I left the teaching service so I could expand on this type of work and since then I have been able to do that,” she shared.
She has been volunteering with non-governmental organisations to teach life skills. At one time she was also a life coach with a USAID-funded programme through which she reached more than 100 young people in Berbice, teaching them life and employability skills and even helping them to find jobs.
From the business aspect, she shared that last year she and a colleague did a pop-up shop in Corriverton, Berbice, which was well received with many hand crafted designs being on display.
One of the selling points of Richardson’s business is that she purchases all of her material locally in the Skeldon Market and she handmakes her products. During peak seasons, she works along with other sewers.
At La Vie they make clothing for women and girls and have now expanded to making clothes for men. The business’s name is her attempt at capturing Guyanese life and Caribbean living in the way she designs her clothes. While the business is mainly online, the young entrepreneur said she is working on having a physical space so people can visit and have customised items made. Last year she had her clothes displayed in a city store and this was well received; so she is working on having more of this.
“I do seasonal clothing and I really wanted to capture the thoughts of the designers who get on board with me, so that’s why I chose that name. I really hope it will help to guide my vision of representing Guyanese life…more like living Guyanese,” she said.
In 2021 she started a foundation called IMM Network. Last year, under the umbrella of the foundation she hosted three seminars, in Berbice and Georgetown where she had various resource persons addressing the women and girls on vision planning, entrepreneurship and making one’s business work and networking.
She hopes to empower women, help them understand who they are and the value that they carry.
YLAI
Richardson was recently announced as one of four Guyanese selected for the 2023 US Department of State’s Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative (YLAI) Fellowship Program. In a release, the embassy described her as a creative designer who works in the artisan products sector, leading La Vie Guyana and carving a niche for ready-made clothing in the Guyanese fashion industry.
Richardson shared that in 2018 she had heard of the YLAI programme and how it trained entrepreneurs and she also met a few people who had benefited from it.
“It really piqued my interest because as a young business person I didn’t have the skills I think I needed to make my business successful and I wanted to be part of it,” she recalled, adding that at that time she was too young to apply.
At the age of 24 she applied, but was unsure of being given the nod as she knew how competitive it was, but putting “as much honesty and as much of myself into the application” may have done the trick, she said. She looks forward to being equipped with the skills to manage her business and make it grow.
At the end of the programme she hopes to have the knowledge she needs to take her business to the point she envisions and she is excited to meet other artisans and those who work with women as she focuses on melding those two aspects of her life together. Ultimately, she hopes to improve the lives of women and girls.
Looking forward, she wants her business to blossom to a place where other Guyanese designers – those who design simple everyday clothing – have a place where they can bring their designs and be part of a team and they can then mass produce together and sell readymade products to Guyanese.
She also hopes to train and employ women designers and sewers with women being the main target of the products.
Richardson is one of four daughters for her parents, who are both pastors. She is also a pastor at the God of Change Apostolic Ministries.
