THE EVANGELICAL community is getting ready to give Barbadians practical methods to survive the current economic woes.
The issue of the church helping during hard times was so pressing, the Barbados Evangelical Association (BEA) suspended the agenda for its annual general meeting on Monday to deal with the issue.
Some of the suggestions put forward by the audience included growing food for sale; employing better methods of saving and budgeting; setting up a community fund and diverting more church funds towards helping people find employment.
During the specially convened meeting at the Faith Wesleyan Holiness Church in Jackman’s, St Michael, the grouping took suggestions on the way forward and decided on a course of action.
“The BEA executive has, from time to time, met late hours, trying to see how best to forge a path ahead and it is clear to me that the voice of the BEA has to be maintained. Society needs to hear our voice in national affairs even though there are currently too many voices and too many agendas and this can confuse our faith, especially when some of the teachings being espoused are alien to scripture,” said president Dr Nigel Taylor.
“The executive will meet within the next two weeks to discuss, collate and prioritise all the material. We are trying to be proactive – we have heard the initial plan of the Minister of Finance – as we are coming closer to the time where the initial lay-offs will take place. We can sense this anticipatory affect so what we will do is treat it as an emergency.”
He said one of the top priorities for the BEA would be retraining and retooling people to change their skill sets and adapt to change.
“Training, coaching and retooling will be important because if a man can think psychologically he is not a failure. He can see the need to grasp another opportunity to take another aspect of work and build on it. We need to let people have a sense of pride in themselves and not to see themselves as welfare cases,” he said.
As such, Taylor said while someone might be working in one area, they could capitalise on another aspect of their skill set and work in another area or learn how to do so.
“What is happening now should really teach us how to maximise and mobilise community effort and our innate skills. There are some skills inside us that we don’t use simply because we just go through life with things being accepted easily, so maybe this will awaken within us the sleeping giant,” he said.
Taylor said the BEA would utilise the facilities of its member bodies to conduct the training. However, he emphasised the goal was to uplift others to help themselves as they did not wish to create a culture of mendicancy. (CA)
