Nelcia Robinson-Hazell

Nelcia Robinson-Hazell
Nelcia Robinson-Hazell
Born	Nelcia Marshall
Nationality	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Other names	Nelcia Marshall Robinson, Nelcia Marshall Hazell, Nelcia Hazell, Nelcia Robinson
Occupation	community organizer and activist

Last updated March 26, 2021

Nelcia Robinson-Hazell (also known as Nelcia Marshall-Robinson and Nelcia Robinson) is a Black Carib poet, community organizer and activist. She has spearheaded the development of policy initiatives throughout the Caribbean on issues regarding gender and indigenous identity. Serving as the president of the National Council of Women of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, she began in the 1980s to change the organization toward political action. Recognizing a need to establish research on the needs of women, she was involved in the creation of both local and regional organizations to analyze and develop information about the socio-economic and political inequalities women faced. She created similar initiatives for indigenous peoples, beginning first in Saint Vincent and then expanding them regionally. Robinson has been involved in international directives including the World Summit for Social Development and the 1995 World Conference on Women, as well as follow-up conferences discussing such issues as poverty, economic empowerment and violence against women. She has served as a civil society representative on the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commissions and as chair of the Commonwealth Women's Network.

Early life

Nelcia Marshall was born in Greggs Village in the central part of the Windward Islands on Saint Vincent in the British West Indies. Her heritage is Black Carib, as her ancestors were given amnesty to remain in St. Vincent when the Garifuna were expelled from the island.^[1] The ethnic group, which is a mixed heritage of West African, Arawak, and Island Carib, is considered the genetic parent of the Garifuna people, but differ in that Black Caribs have higher concentrations of indigenous genes, whereas Garifuna have higher African markers.^[2] Marshall grew up in Questelles, where she attended Questelles Primary School.^[3] After completing her secondary education, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Human Services at Springfield College, in Springfield, Massachusetts. She went on to study international development as a Kellogg Fellow.^[4]

Career

In 1983, Marshall-Robinson was elected president of the National Council of Women. Under her leadership, the organization shifted from a traditional women's organization dealing with social issues toward an activist agency seeking political change. Because the National Council of Women was a government umbrella entity, political changes were reflected by inconsistent approach to women's concerns. To counter-balance the whims of different administrations,^[5] Robinson and others established the Committee for the Development of Women in 1984 to conduct research on women's issues.^[6] She served as the Committee's coordinator.^[5]^[6] Robinson ran as a candidate for the United Progressive Movement (UPM) party in the island's elections for the House of Assembly in 1984.^[7] In 1985, she became a founding member of the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), an organization aimed at analyzing and documenting the socio-economic and political inequalities facing women in the region, as a means upon which to base corrective political actions.^[8]

In 1987, Robinson became coordinator of the Caribbean Association of Indigenous People.^[4] Two years previously, in response to the sale of land in the traditional Carib homelands to a Danish development company, she had worked to organize indigenous Carib community members to enable them to leverage their collective bargaining abilities with the government. The community formed the Campaign for the Development of the Carib Community and their pressure on the government, led to the nationalization of the property.^[9] Through continued outreach, Robinson has worked to reestablish ties between the Black Carib community of Saint Vincent and the Garifuna populations in Belize and other Central American countries,^[10] through cultural heritage programs.^[11] She has published five collections of poetry^[12] and a poetry award in St. Vincent bears her name.^[13]

In 1995, Robinson attended the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, participating in a hunger strike by women from developing nations to bring attention to the need for assistance to eliminate poverty and for debt relief from developed nations.^[14] Her concerns were that small island nations in the Caribbean due to size and environmental factors were vulnerable under existing trade policies and that the vulnerability adversely impacted women to a greater extent,^[15] because women were often "viewed as a source of cheap exploitable labour".^[16] She subsequently assisted in the planning events for the 1995 World Conference on Women held in Beijing and the follow-up conferences held in 2005 and 2010.^[17]^[18]

Robinson served as the coordinator of CAFRA from 1996 to 2009.^[4] In 2003, she was appointed to serve as a civil society representative on the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commissions (RJLSC), which with the establishment of the Caribbean Court of Justice was created to propose and recommend judicial candidates to ensure that the judiciary remains independent of political influence.^[19]^[20] In 2009, Robinson-Hazell became a Goodwill Ambassador, and was granted a diplomatic passport, by the cabinet of Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.^[21]

Hazell has been involved in numerous endeavors to improve vulnerable populations including serving on the executive of the National Youth Council, as the coordinator for Serving Housebound and Retired Elderly (SHARE), president of the Association of Social Workers and on a regional level has served as the national representative for the Caribbean Network for Integrated Rural Development (CNIRD) and as the Caribbean Gender and Trade Network's coordinator since 1999.^[4] In 2012, she passed the presidency of the National Council of Women of SVG to Anesta Rodney.^[22] In 2013, she was the chair of the Commonwealth Women's Network, an organization which works to secure economic empowerment and gender equality, as well as alleviate violence against women.^[23]

Related Research Articles

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, also often known simply as Saint Vincent, is an island country in the Caribbean. It is located in the southeast Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles, which lie in the West Indies at the southern end of the eastern border of the Caribbean Sea where the latter meets the Atlantic Ocean.

This article is about the demographics of the population of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, including population density, ethnicity, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.

The Kalinago, also known as the Island Caribs or simply Caribs, are an indigenous people of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. They may have been related to the Mainland Caribs (Kalina) of South America, but they spoke an unrelated language known as Island Carib. They also spoke a pidgin language associated with the Mainland Caribs.

Saint Vincent is a volcanic island in the Caribbean. It is the largest island of the country Saint Vincent and the Grenadines island chain. It is located in the Caribbean Sea, between Saint Lucia and Grenada. It is composed of partially submerged volcanic mountains. Its largest volcano and the country's highest peak, La Soufrière, is active, having last erupted in 1979.

The Garifuna people, are a mixed African and indigenous people who are descended from the Black Caribs, who lived on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent, and speak Garifuna, an Arawakan language.

Black Caribs, also known as Garifuna, are an ethnic group native to the island of St. Vincent. The Black Caribs, or Garinagu, are a mix of Amerindian and African people who intermarried as a byproduct of European colonialism. As of 2011, the Black Caribs make up roughly 2% of the population Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. There remains a significant diaspora of Black Caribs in the Americas.

Joseph Chatoyer, also known as Satuye, was a Garifuna (Carib) chief who led a revolt against the British colonial government of Saint Vincent in 1795. Killed that year, he is now considered a national hero of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and also of Belize and Costa Rica. Vincentian politician Camillo Gonsalves described him in 2011 as his country's "sole national hero".

Ebenezer Theodore Joshua was a Vincentian politician and the first chief minister of Saint Vincent from 1961 to 1967. He was the Leader of the Legislative Council from 1956 to 1961.

Garifuna (Karif) is a minority language widely spoken in villages of Garifuna people in the western part of the northern coast of Central America.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Rugby Union is the governing body for rugby union in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. It is considered a Tier 3 rugby nation by World Rugby of which it is a full member. It is also a member of the Rugby Americas North (RAN). Saint Vincent and the Grenadines men's and women's teams compete regionally against other teams in this group.

Baliceaux is a small, privately owned Caribbean island and is one of the Grenadines chain of islands which lie between the larger islands of Saint Vincent and Grenada. Politically, it is part of the nation of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

The monarchy of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is the constitutional system of government in which a hereditary monarch is the sovereign and head of state of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, forming the core of the country's Westminster-style parliamentary democracy. The Crown is thus is the foundation of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Vincentian government. While Royal Assent and the royal sign-manual are required to enact laws, letters patent, and orders in council, the authority for these acts stems from the Vincentian populace, and, within the conventional stipulations of constitutional monarchy, the sovereign's direct participation in any of these areas of governance is limited, with most related powers entrusted for exercise by the elected and appointed parliamentarians, the ministers of the Crown generally drawn from amongst them, and the judges and Justices of the Peace.

Afro-Vincentians or Black Vincentians are Vincentians whose ancestry lies within Sub-Saharan Africa.

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St. Vincent Girls High School Public secondary school in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

St. Vincent Girls' High School is a secondary education facility opened in Kingstown on the island of St. Vincent in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The school was founded by Mary L. Ince in 1911 at the corner of Linley and Tyrell Street in Kingstown. In 1914, the government took over operation of the school and made Ince the headmistress. The following year, students began participating for the first time in the Cambridge Examinations. By 1918, the school had a staff of 3 teachers and 16 students and functioned as a secondary school for middle-class pupils, who were able to afford the 6£ per year fee, as elites could afford to send their children to Barbados or Britain for higher education. In 1935, the school relocated to its present location on Murray Road in Kingstown to a site known as the Judges Lodge. The school's students consistently rank highly in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate examinations, with pass rates over 95%. In every year since 2000, the school has had the highest rate of students passing the examination in the country.

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Rhoda Reddock is a Trinidadian educator and social activist. She has served as founder, chair, adviser, or member of several organizations, such as the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA), the Global Fund for Women, and the Regional Advisory Committee of the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS established by UNAIDS. In 2002 she received the Seventh CARICOM Triennial Award for Women, was Trinidad and Tobago's nominee for the International Women of Courage Award in 2008, and was honoured in her country's National Honour Awards ceremony in 2012 with the Gold Medal for the Development of Women.

Rosalind Ambrose is a Vincentian radiologist who has been instrumental in the development of the field in her country and throughout the Caribbean region. She served as Director of Education for the Kingstown Medical College, was a founding member of the Caribbean Society of Radiologists, and was President of the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Medical Association from 2001 to 2010.

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References

Citations

↑ Twin 2006, p. 105.
↑ Crawford 1983, p. 161.
↑ Garraway 2009.
1 2 3 4 University of the West Indies 2013.
1 2 Green 1997, p. 238.
1 2 Lewis 2002, p. 240.
↑ Green 1997, p. 240.
↑ Minutes 1985.
↑ Twin 2006, pp. 101-102.
↑ Humes 2011.
↑ Garraway 2012a.
↑ Sweeting 2010, p. 106.
↑ The Vincentian 2012.
↑ The Galveston Daily News 1995, p. 5.
↑ Madeley 2003, p. 50.
↑ Watson, Leander-Watson & Allbrook 2007, p. 27.
↑ Bloom 2012.
↑ The Gleaner 2005, p. 89.
↑ Caricom Secretariat 2003.
↑ Formisano & Moghadam 2005, p. 16.
↑ The Vincy 2009, pp. 2, 10.
↑ Garraway 2012b.
↑ The Vincentian 2013.

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