First Lady and Peace Corps Guyana’s Country Director discuss possible partnerships

Georgetown, Guyana – (November 6, 2017) First Lady, Mrs. Sandra Granger, today, received a courtesy call from Peace Corps Guyana’s Country Director, Ms. Kury Cobham and Director of Programme and Training, Ms. Melanie Ingalls, during which they discussed possible areas of collaboration to provide more opportunities for young people to benefit from health and educational programmes.

First Lady, Mrs. Sandra Granger (centre) is flanked by, from left to right, Peace Corps Guyana Country Director, Ms. Kury Cobham and Director of Programme and Training, Ms. Melanie Ingalls at the close of a meeting at State House.

Providing an overview of the projects in her portfolio as First Lady, particularly those that benefit marginalised women and youth, Mrs. Granger said that her office engages the prospective beneficiaries ensure buy-in so that the benefits of such programmes can have far-reaching and long-term impacts. “My concern is that when we do a project… it has to have value to [the beneficiaries] … The other thing I want, when we have these projects, that there [are] trickle down [benefits] to the community,” the First Lady said at the meeting, which was held at State House.

Meanwhile, Ms. Cobham, who recently took up her appointment, said that she has been enjoying following the First Lady’s work over the last few months and that she has found a number of connections between her projects and those being undertaken by the Peace Corps Guyana. She was keen to hear the First Lady’s perspective on the impact that some of those projects have been having on her target groups.

First Lady, Mrs. Sandra Granger (first, left) and Peace Corps Guyana Director of Programme and Training, Ms. Melanie Ingalls pay keen attention to Peace Corps Guyana Country Director, Ms. Kury Cobham, during a meeting at State House today.

“We really have been enjoying following you, for me, for the past few months and just seeing a lot of the synergy between the efforts that you’re doing with marginalised groups, particularly young women and adults, as well as the elderly… There’s quite a number of synergies between our efforts in health, education as well as the environment in our work in the interior so we wanted to share that with you and hear a little bit more about your work and see if there may places where we can coordinate and collaborate,” she said.

According to its website, Peace Corps Guyana partners with the Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry of Education and other local and international partners to implement initiatives that impact the health and well-being of residents therein and to increase literacy and build life skills with the view of helping beneficiaries to maximise their potential. The organisation currently has 65 volunteers dispatched across the country and 40 are expected to be assigned to Guyana in June 2018.