Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Ser­vice and giv­ing have al­ways been a piv­otal part of Deb­o­rah de Rosia’s life. Be­ing ho­n­oured with the In­spi­ra­tional Cham­pi­on of Women Award by the IWFTT this month of Sep­tem­ber comes af­ter decades of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice to oth­ers, and she is in­sis­tent that the award should not be on­ly hers but a trib­ute to all those who have giv­en their time and tal­ent to the Eter­nal Light Com­mu­ni­ty.

Born in­to a fam­i­ly that was ded­i­cat­ed to work­ing with the church, de Rosia re­mem­bers a child­hood where she and her sib­lings were al­ways acute­ly aware of a wider com­mu­ni­ty that they had to look out for.

“We col­lect­ed cloth­ing, washed clothes for St Vin­cent de Paul, creamed but­ter and sug­ar, and made cakes to sell to col­lect mon­ey for the poor,” she says.

As her fam­i­ly was a sin­gle-in­come house­hold, she re­mem­bers her aunt who lived with them help­ing to sup­ple­ment the fam­i­ly’s in­come and con­stant­ly be­ing sur­round­ed by ex­am­ples of self­less­ness, gen­eros­i­ty and care.

Af­ter at­tend­ing sec­ondary school at St Joseph’s Con­vent, PoS, she went on to John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute, where she did cours­es in food tech­nol­o­gy. Con­sid­er­ing her­self a “life­long learn­er,” she then went to the Catholic Teach­ers Col­lege and be­gan teach­ing at her al­ma mater, St Joseph’s Con­vent.

Af­ter some years of teach­ing, she ap­proached the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to ap­ply for a schol­ar­ship to study di­etet­ics in Eng­land. One day, while she was prepar­ing to leave the teach­ing ser­vice to go to the UK, she heard God say­ing, “‘Have you asked me?’” Walk­ing back to the school with that in mind, she won­dered, “Do I have to ask You if I want to go to study?”

But it was that call that re­mained on her mind. Not long af­ter, while ly­ing in her bed at home, she heard God say­ing, “‘Deb, a day will come when the Gov­ern­ment won’t be able to pay you. I am your source.’”

Short­ly af­ter, she was in­vit­ed on a mis­sion­ary trip to Ghana, which changed her orig­i­nal course from study­ing in the UK, and this even­tu­al­ly led her to var­i­ous African coun­tries such as Ugan­da, Kenya, and Nige­ria.

“God’s in­ten­tion for me was dif­fer­ent,” she says, and she be­gan a de­vot­ed ser­vice to evan­ge­li­sa­tion, spread­ing the word of God world­wide. One day, when de Rosia re­turned to T&T, she en­coun­tered a cry­ing ba­by in her moth­er’s front gallery. Af­ter wait­ing to see if some­one would re­turn for the ba­by, she even­tu­al­ly took the child to the po­lice sta­tion. The po­lice in­di­cat­ed that de Rosia should take care of the child, and as she says, “the rest was his­to­ry.”

The next years of her life were spent build­ing the Eter­nal Light Com­mu­ni­ty to serve dis­pos­sessed women, chil­dren and men. De Rosia be­came de­vot­ed to the ser­vice of oth­ers and found­ed and di­rect­ed four non-prof­its that cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties for women, men, and oth­er young adults, through ed­u­ca­tion and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing.

The GOSHEN Home and Halfway House was es­tab­lished in Sep­tem­ber 1987 and catered for preg­nant teenagers and bat­tered women whose lives were en­dan­gered by their spous­es. The Am­i­ca House is a chil­dren’s home that was formed af­ter de Rosia en­coun­tered an aban­doned new­born ba­by on their doorstep who was wrapped in a bloody tow­el. Am­i­ca House con­sists of nine char­i­ta­ble hous­es that care for the el­der­ly, the in­firm, and boys and girls in var­i­ous parts of the coun­try.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion has since helped and nur­tured more than 60 girls to grow to adult­hood. As a for­mer ed­u­ca­tor, de Rosia al­so saw the need to of­fer ed­u­ca­tion to un­der­priv­i­leged young peo­ple and found­ed the Eter­nal Light Com­mu­ni­ty Vo­ca­tion­al School.

The school be­gan humbly with class­es at her moth­er’s house, in­clud­ing sec­re­tar­i­al class­es, cake-ic­ing cours­es, and GCSE sub­jects. Now, as a re­sult of gen­er­ous do­na­tions, the school has new­ly opened in Sea Lots, for the ben­e­fit of the com­mu­ni­ty there.

The school will house a nurs­ery and teach ten dis­ci­plines—all cho­sen be­fore­hand dur­ing dis­cus­sion with the res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty. It will al­so have a nurs­ery for the girls who al­ready have ba­bies and think they can­not go back to school. The col­lec­tion of these NGOs has been apt­ly named the Eter­nal Light Com­mu­ni­ty, as ac­cord­ing to de Rosia, “light push­es back dark­ness.”

Her hope is to teach the word of God, en­cour­age good de­ci­sion-mak­ing, em­pow­er men and women, and cre­ate a deeply root­ed cul­ture of ser­vice in T&T. En­cour­ag­ing young women to find pos­i­tive role mod­els, con­fi­dants, and lead­ers, she ad­vis­es that shar­ing sis­ter­hood is es­sen­tial in this life.

“In every hu­man be­ing, there is a gem; some­times you need some­one to draw it out and pol­ish it to be­come the woman God wants you to be.”

Re­mem­ber­ing God’s call many years ago, which said that the Gov­ern­ment would one day no longer be able to pay her, de Rosia is filled with grat­i­tude for God mak­ing it all pos­si­ble and the gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tions of the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty in T&T, “al­low­ing us to care for oth­ers spir­i­tu­al­ly, ma­te­ri­al­ly and psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly.”

She does not ac­cept self-serv­ing plat­i­tudes, how­ev­er, and says that “this ho­n­ourable award from the IWFTT is be­stowed up­on all those who have jour­neyed with me over the past 52 years. This award is for the Eter­nal Light Com­mu­ni­ty.”