HELPING HANDS

By Tara Ryazansky

Photos courtesy of We Are GUTSY

Bayonne real estate agent Janice Hall is gutsy. She’s determined to help kids no matter what. Hall is founder of We Are GUTSY.

“I know gutsy means a lot of things to a lot of people, but to us it’s always in caps,” Hall says. “It stands for Guyanese United to Serve our Youth. Our mission is to foster the wellbeing of children, through coaching and mentoring, so they can develop civic minded attitudes and behavior, so they can become positive citizens of Guyana.”

That’s where Hall is from. She moved from Guyana to Bayonne in 2000. She founded We Are Gutsy in 2018. In 2019 she gathered approximately 40 teachers, social workers, and parents in Guyana for training in We Are GUTSY techniques. “We sat them down, and we did training in core values like strength and integrity and honesty,” Hall says.

They then bussed the caregivers along with 160 kids ages 3-12 for a weeklong pilot program. Hall says it was a huge success, though the pandemic caused the organization to pivot and provide resources online only for now. She plans to return to Guyana next year. “It’s only COVID that stops me.”

Seeds are Sown

“When a child is neglected in those formative years, they do not develop the ability to cope with life,” Hall says. “They have to cope with growing up in order to succeed in school, in the workplace, in relationships, and in life. That’s why I founded this organization.”

Hall says that she saw a need for the organization because of the high rates of child neglect reported by Guyana’s Child Care and Protection Agency.

To help children you have to help their parents. “There are many socioeconomic factors that contribute to this,” Hall says. “We’re not saying they’re bad caregivers, or they’re bad parents, we’re saying they just need help,” Hall says. “A lot of them don’t know it.”

In mid-April, We Are GUTSY led an online workshop for parents. “We were discussing parenting styles,” she says. “We asked them what parenting style they thought they had. There are four parenting styles mainly: permissive, authoritarian, authoritative and uninvolved. Almost everyone thought they were authoritative, which is ‘Let’s discuss it’. By the end of the discussion when we showed them what these styles meant, almost all of them realized that they were authoritarian, ‘Do this because I say so.’ That’s how I grew up.”

Children participate in the first workshop in Guyana.

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Hall says that she would have benefitted from We Are GUTSY when she was a child. “I learned through trial and error in life through a lot of not so pleasant experiences how to cope,” she says. “I remember at age 14 or so a female relative of mine, a lovely young lady who I really looked up to committed suicide, and I remember feeling so distraught because she had indicated that she was going to do it, and she had attempted it before. Yet there were not resources to help her. I remember thinking, ‘Why couldn’t they have prevented it?’ And then right in my school, as this was going on, one of my classmate’s siblings also committed suicide. These things bothered me.”

Hall says Guyana has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. “We think that if we can get the children in their formative years to learn values and respect and resilience, then we think we can help to prevent all of the other issues that the country is grappling with.”

One unlikely outcome of the COVID-19 shutdowns is that We Are GUTSY has the undivided attention of parents. Though internet access can be spotty in the developing nation, Hall says that there’s been a great turnout for positive parenting online workshops. “Parental involvement is key to determining the outcome of children,” she says. “They’re doing the best they can, but we know that they need help, and we want to give that to them. We find that they haven’t resisted. We’re encouraged by that.”

For Hall, it’s personal.

“I chose Guyana because it’s where I was born,” she says. “It’s my homeland. The need is there, and the resources are limited. If not me, who? I don’t think any of us should forget where we come from. I always felt that if I was ever able to do something like this, I wanted to do it. Fortunately my real estate career gives me the opportunity to help.”

You can donate to We Are GUTSY at wearegutsy.org. Hall says it’s self-funded, volunteer-run, and they hope to grow.

“I would love to see our curriculum in every school in Guyana,” she says. “About 70 percent of Guyana is underpopulated or not populated at all. Eighty percent of the country is covered in rain forest. So it’s beautiful, and vast, and most of the people live on the coast. The original inhabitants live out where it’s difficult to get to.

“My dream is to be able to get to those kids because they also need the help.”— BLP