Aug. 26, 2007 — Virgin Islands Perinatal Inc. wound up their Spirit in Community Action and leadership training program Saturday at the Hotel Caravelle on St. Croix.
The program, based on the leadership training program Spirit in Action, is designed to help community activists and workers build lasting change within the community.
The nine training sessions, totaling 40 hours, explored four core strategies culled from the Spirit in Action program aimed at building a diverse grass roots movement.
"So many times we don’t talk about spirit," said Program Coordinator Aminah Saleem. "People who are active in organizations trying to help their community have a lot of spirit. We want to strengthen and develop the self and the community through spirit.”
Valerie Briscoe, Rashida Henigan, Judith Milligan, Naisha Monelle, Ana Morales, and Lynda Mohammed are the community volunteers who completed the Spirit in Action program.
The program takes an open, ecumenical and nonsectarian approach to spirituality. At the beginning of each session, the participants engaged in a roundtable discussion of spiritual matters.
Sessions on healing divisions and building a diverse movement took aim at the divisions of race, class, gender identity, language, sexual orientation and politics that prevent people from coming together in common purpose. Instead of focusing on “the enemy” and problems, Spirit in Action asks people to create positive visions of the future and work toward them.
“Collective visioning is an important part of what we are doing,” said Saleem.
The program was one of several community action initiatives financed by a one-year grant of $50,000 from the Ford Foundation. In March, V.I. Perinatal joined with the V.I. Commission on the Status of Women to explore whether quality health care should be seen as a right by Virgin Islands citizens.
In addition to community building and educational exercises, V.I. Perinatal Inc. provides one-on-one help to residents having trouble with access to health care. As their name suggests, their mission is to improve pregnant women's access to health care in the U.S. Virgin Islands and promote women's reproductive health and rights.
“The Community Action Initiative is the 1st step in a catalytic process to spark change on different levels, one at the community level and the other at the policy-making level,” said Barbara Jackson, V.I. Perinatal executive director. “It is establishing a bridge between the community and policy makers on health care issues, providing an interchange so that the community can communicate their needs and the policy makers can be pro-active and provide realistic solutions to the issues of access and existing health care disparities.”
Saleem said the health needs of the territory are growing more severe.
“We are facing a serious health crisis in the territory,” Saleem said. “We see more and more end-stage kidney failure, amputations and other severe health problems rising out of the epidemic of diabetes and hypertension we have.”
If you are interested in learning about the Spirit in Action initiative, please call 713-1606 or check out their website. For more about V.I. Perinatal Inc. and how you can become involved, call Barbara Jackson at (340) 642-8771.
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