By Desilon Daniels“We believe that the human resources of Guyana are the most valuable resource that this country has and we have to do everything within our power to develop it, to protect it and to ensure that all people can live lives of dignity and respect and lives that are productive. That is what is driving us.” It was some time last year that members of the non-governmental organisation, Guyana Foundation (GF), ventured into a community to distribute school supplies to children.Managing Director of The Guyana Foundation, Anthony Autar.Volunteers from the village came out, and among them was a 16-year-old girl. Guyana Foundation Managing Director, Anthony Autar, remembered that she was very interested in the Foundation’s work.“She was giving us suggestions on what we could come back to do; she was interested in bringing dancing to the community,Wholesale Hockey Jerseys 2018,” Autar said.But, when GF returned to the community a few weeks later, they could not find the teenager. Eventually, they were told that she had committed suicide.“I was shocked; she was full of life and she was so seemingly hopeful for the future. It was only when we learnt the underlying reasons did we realise what she had been dealing with,” Autar said. “We had already started our suicide programme but her death really opened up our eyes; it made us realise that even within our own mix that there are people struggling with their own issues.”The Guyana Foundation is a charitable trust with big goals. Started in 2013 by Supriya Singh-Bodden, the NGO is run by a board of trustees. As the Managing Director, Autar is tasked with running the day to day affairs of the NGO.But the NGO is made up of more than persons sitting behind big fancy desks. Rather, the body is made up of persons who feel and hurt just as anyone else and their hearts are completely into the work they do.Indeed, each time a life is lost and GF is aware of it, the members feel the hurt as if they had lost a loved one.“The number of people ending their lives by suicide was just too high for us to sit back and keep planning and waiting. Suicide does not discriminate and does not wait; it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, young or old,” Autar said in an interview with Kaieteur News.“The Foundation really was started to transform the lives of people and communities in need,” Autar said. He continued, “We originally started off with eight different project areas, including mental health, literacy, youth and women empowerment, community renewal, and care of the elderly.”So far, GF has impacted entire communities through its charitable work. In one area, it provided solar energy products to those living without electricity.According to Autar, GF had big plans when it began. However, he said, things had diverged slightly from what the foundation had set out to do. He explained that part of the reason was the recognition that some needs in society were more urgent than others.“We couldn’t wait to do things the way we had planned it,” he said. For example, he said, GF’s mental health project had not been placed as high on the body’s agenda as it is now.“Our plan was to start it this year but we actually started it in January of last year because we felt the need was high,” he said.He further said that GF did a number of different things in the area of mental health. Firstly, he said, GF launched a sensitisation programme to tackle mental health. This programme saw GF running ads in the local media, creating a database of the few local mental health professionals, and meeting with communities to discuss the issue.“We wanted to raise awareness about mental health issues because, at the time, there were very few persons talking about it,” he said. He further stressed that GF understood that it could not simply jump into the area of mental health without first understanding the basic principles.“It is part of our core ethics; whatever project we do, we have to always follow the highest level of professional standards,” Autar added.This ethic saw GF collaborating with a researcher from Holland and together they worked to conduct a study into the socioeconomic factors driving suicide in Guyana. Additionally,Wholesale China Jerseys, he said, the findings were released in September 2014 and the data is being used to develop GF’s policies on suicide by using the information on the underlying driving factors.Outside of its mental health programme, The Guyana Foundation does other charitable work. Here, a boat full of barrels of donations is being loaded to head off to Santa Rosa.According to Autar, one of most alarming findings that came out of the study was the high prevalence of violence in Guyana’s society, which is often covered up in homes. He said the prevalence of violence against children was also notably high.“One of the things we realised is that when it comes to suici