Too many afflicted by the ‘instant’ syndrome

A social activist has called on the private sector to play a greater role in the alleviation of poverty in Trinidad and Tobago. Sandrine Rattan, Communications Officer at the Venture Capital Incentive Programme (VCIP), stressed the need for the private sector to take up its role in helping provide the proper resources to educate the nation’s poverty-stricken population on methods of relieving their situation. The government, she asserted, cannot do it alone. However, she lamented, thus far the private sector has remained more or less silent on the situation. “Is the private sector interested?” she queried. “And if they are, what is its approach? “Maybe once the government knows that there is some concern by the private sector and the Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) surely they will facilitate and drive the process. But I am not hearing anyone,” she said.

Rattan also commented on the notion of many that the “rich was getting richer, while the poor was getting poorer. “I don’t know if as a society we can just sit on our laurels and make a comment like this in the absence of any kind of bench marking or any kind of real research as to why the rich keeps getting richer and the poor poorer.” She put forward the view that the wealth of a chosen few in society keeps increasing due to proper planning and appropriate strategies put in place by members of this upper-class. The wealthy, she said, in most cases, have a strong network which has stemmed from a decision made from early that they would live a certain life. They have made a conscious decision not to be poor, she said. This is also her story. Rattan came from humble beginnings, growing up with her grandparents in Santa Cruz. She turned to education as a release from her situation, secure in the knowledge that a proper education coupled with sacrifice and time would get her to where she wanted to be in life.

She recalled, “from around the age of six, I made a lot of observations in society and I said to myself, I don’t want to be poor. “So what I did from then, was position myself to recognise education as the passport to success because to me, poverty is a social ill. Rattan, who is a trained communications specialist and a graduate of the University of the West Indies, as well as a trainer in business management and  administration and a private tutor for eight to 11-year-olds, is currently in the process of completing her MBA degree in Marketing, and will shortly undertake her PH.D. on “Corporate Transformation and Entrepreneurial Development. “It has to do with individuals having a vision for themselves and I had a vision,” she said. She expressed her belief that poverty was merely a state of mind for many, who have been conditioned to accept it as a way of life. Many have been conditioned to believe that the system is working against them and therefore continue the cycle of poverty that may have been formed by their parents and grandparents.

“Many of them,” she explained, “think that the system is against them. But I say that the system is there for everyone, you just need to know how to use it and with the correct approach. “The system that exists now is basically the same as when I was a child, but one has to manipulate and capitalise on this system and obtain whatever returns there are in it for you.” Rattan’s interaction with the nation’s youth has revealed an attitude of “immediate gratification.”  Most of them, she maintained, have dreams, but they are not prepared to make the appropriate sacrifices and wait for the benefits to come their way. This attitude of “now” she contended, can be linked to the current crime situation. She explained, “most of the young people have this attitude of what they need, they need it now. I need a car - I need it now, I need a house - I need it now. “But you cannot get it now, because these things require time and there is a process you have to follow in order to get them.

“In my belief it has to do with the psyche and I think we need to look at the whole social psyche of people which has to be refocused and re-energised to understand that things cannot happen now,” she maintained. Her solution - private sector organisations should join forces with NGOs and government institutions to examine the situation and determine what areas needed focus, be it education or the provision of resources for the poor in the form of food, shelter and clothing or even. Education, she suggested, was the more viable option. “Education is a permanent thing,” she maintained. “It stays with you until you die. “We need to understand that in an effort to become academically empowered, one has to endure some element of sacrifice in order to succeed and this requires refocusing and reprioritising.”