EPISODE 67: Clarine Cave: Partnering to Transform Lives

The transformative power of arts-based intervention for vulnerable youth takes center stage in this compelling conversation with Clarine Cave, founder of Partners That Care International in Barbados. What began as a personal journey through sports, military service, and community development has blossomed into a life-changing mission serving at-risk adolescents and food-insecure families across the island.

Stepping into the heart of Barbados' educational challenges, Clarine shares the remarkable story behind her organization's innovative 3MD (Make Music Make a Difference) program. This two-year scholarship initiative uses musical instruction as a vehicle for profound behavioral change, teaching vulnerable teens aged 13-16 to identify emotions, regulate responses, and develop interpersonal skills through collaborative band experiences. The results speak volumes: "The children we get at the beginning of this program are unidentifiable at the end," Clarine observes.

Beyond musical transformation, Partners That Care tackles food insecurity through its Summer Fiesta program, providing essential hampers to families during school breaks when government meal subsidies aren't available. 

While welcoming youth of all backgrounds without religious requirements, the organization's leadership approaches challenges with unwavering spiritual conviction. "If it's too big for you to handle, then it is a God project," Clarine explains, offering encouragement to listeners contemplating their own seemingly impossible dreams.

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Transcript

Introducing Clarine Cave

Grantley Martelly 0:09

Welcome to Above the Noise, a podcast at the intersection of faith, race and reconciliation, and I'm your host Gr antley, Martelly. So welcome back to Above the Noise Faith, race and Reconciliation. My guest today is Ms. Clarine Cave, from Partners that Care International on the island of Barbados, looking forward to our conversation together and I know you're going to enjoy it through the work that she and her team are doing there. So, Clarine, welcome to Above the Noise.

Clarine Cave 0:47

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

Grantley Martelly 0:52

Introduce yourself to our guests. Tell them who you are, where you live, a little bit about you and your family.

Clarine Cave 1:00

Well, like I said, my name is Clarine or Clarine Cave. A lot of Americans call me Clarine because it's the short A and not Clarine with the long A.

Grantley Martelly 1:12

Which do you prefer?

Clarine Cave 1:14

It doesn't matter, it really doesn't.

Grantley Martelly 1:17

I can go back to my bedroom and call you Clarine if you want me to Right, so Clarine is good, okay, good so

Grantley Martelly 1:30

Clarine is good, okay, I am a mother of five.

Clarine Cave 1:32

I've been married, for December coming will be 30 years, wow and we live here on the island of Barbados, beautiful Barbados. Well, it's raining outside now, but it's usually sunny all year round. Um, I am a very active and avid runner. I love sports and specifically athletics, and I love the Lord, my faith journey. I grew up in church. I like to tell people my story of being at church more often as a child than I thought I should be, but it wasn't one specific church, so my story goes back.

Clarine Cave 2:10

I was born by a Dominican parent. My mom is from Dominica. Most of my siblings not most all of my siblings are from Dominica. So when my mom came here and she had me, I'm born to a Dominican mom and a Barbadian dad. So I got christened in the Anglican church at St Michael's Cathedral. I then, in my growing up, I started going to the Catholic church because my mom was Catholic, and I started doing First Communion classes. There's confirmation of First Communion, so I did First Communion classes on Saturdays and then my aunt moved here from the UK and I was living with her and my grandmother and in living with them she went to church at the Adventist Church and therefore I used to go to church on Saturday at the Adventist church and then on Sunday at the Catholic church until I decided, okay, I wanted to make a decision for the Lord when I was about 11, and I got baptized into the Adventist church.

Clarine Cave 3:22

I spent most of my teenage years within the Adventist church and, again, you want that little rebellious streak in your teenage years. You want to do what you want to do, and that led me then to my husband, who, him and I, then got baptized into the Wesleyan church, and so we've been on this journey. But my desire and my hunger has always been for the things of God and I think that started to open up when I started doing those First Communion classes within the Catholic Church and it started to grow as I started to read the quarterly and so forth as a young child coming up in the Adventist church. But I always piqued my interest to want to know more about God. Okay, so my journey then developed a thirst or a hunger for the things of God and I started going to the Adventist church on Saturdays and Catholic church on Sundays, and I've always had this appetite to want to know more. To the Adventist church on Saturdays and Catholic church on Sundays, and I've always had this appetite to want to know more.

Clarine Cave 4:32

And my journey then brought me to where I am now, just seeking out the things of God. You know, I love the Lord with all my heart. I just want to do what he wants me to do, and so my journey has been that of coming through the different phases or the different churches. So I am well-churched, going to the different churches and so forth, and I really appreciate the journey that I've been on.

Faith Journey Across Denominations

Grantley Martelly 5:03

So you got through the church part to actually coming to the point of wanting to develop your relationship with God and live a life he wants you to live, which is not always the same thing. That's why I made that distinction.

Clarine Cave 5:18

Exactly.

Grantley Martelly 5:19

Sometimes you can do the church thing and never really find a relationship with God. Once you find a relationship with God, it changes everything. So let's talk about your professional journey. Were you always in non-profit work or where did you start out?

Clarine Cave 5:35

My background initially was sports. I was a professional athlete, one of Barbra's first professional athletes, if you want to put it that way I was in that grouping.

Clarine Cave 5:48

That started the Barbados sports program back in 1991. And I was a distance athlete and a thrower. I threw javelin representing the Barbados Defense Force as well as my country, representing the Barber's Defense Force as well as my country, and that was where my professional journey started. I was 19 at the time, went on from there to do administration. Well, I became a full-time soldier after the sports program. Leg was almost coming to an end because I did not pursue an athletic scholarship for varying reasons I wanted to stay here and, in doing so, join the army full-time.

Clarine Cave 6:39

In doing that I then realized that you know, this is good for the discipline and all that. So I broke my contract. Five years after I enlisted I broke my contract and I pursued then a Korean administration that started within the army. But I continued that pursuit until the desire within me to help people started to grow more. There was always this niggling that I could help. If I can help people, what would I do? What would I do? And it is in those years, those initial years, that I thought OK, I'll start studying psychology. I studied that and then I went on to do my associate degree in psychology. I did well, that was at Barbados Community College. And then I did some certification courses. I did guidance and counseling, gender and development studies. I also did certification in international health.

Clarine Cave 7:50

So this took me down the path of going into HIV and AIDS and that's where I started to look at doing programming work.

Clarine Cave 8:00

I was part of a team that we wrote proposals for funding and stuff like that and we implemented programs within the community more based towards sensitization of the HIV AIDS.

Clarine Cave 8:14

At the time the company had a charity leg of it and I was given the task of managing the charity. And that's how my desire then for charity work started to grow, because I thought of myself then being able to facilitate what I wanted to do, which was my love for the performing arts and helping others, because I did not want to be a psychologist sitting behind a desk and seeing people every day. I wanted to be the boots on the ground. I did not want to be as much as I'm going to qualify guidance counselor. I did not want to be a guidance counselor sitting behind a desk every day, just seeing you know people or seeing students. So I wanted to marry my two loves, which was my love for the performing arts and my love for psychology, and that led me then to a space of wanting to do it for those who, more than likely, were not going to be able to afford to pay for it.

Grantley Martelly 9:25

So out of that desire, then, is that what led you to start Partners that Care? How did you get to the point where you say I want to form this organization and who was going to be your target audience, and why did you do that?

Clarine Cave 9:40

Well, my husband and I we have always again because I guess together we collectively did a lot of helping in the community. We would give out food hampers to random families along the way, we would do things like adopt a children's home or a senior citizen's home and we would go down and cut the grass and paint the building and do stuff like that, and I realized that we both like doing these things for our community. You know, just lift the morale and the spirits of people. And after the company I was working for under the HIV AIDS banner, after that company closed, I wanted to do something and no matter how many applications I wrote, there was nothing coming back. There was just nothing happening.

Clarine Cave 10:36

And your tendency is to say, okay, God, so everybody who was working with me seems to have gone back out to work. What's going on? Why can't I, you know, get employed? And that happened for about a year and a half after, you know, the company closed. And again, a bad idea wasn't my idea. I'd like to take credit for it. No, I wouldn't. God impressed upon me to start Partners at Care International, and the name is an interesting thing because my sister, who lives in New York, worked for a company called Partners in Care and I thought Partners in Care, I don't want to be a partner in care, I'm a partner that cares, so that's how the name came about. In Care, I'm a partner that cares, so that's how the name came about. So I kind of piggyback on that whole partner that cares thing and I want it to be a network of people, not just to be a silo.

From Military to Nonprofit Work

Clarine Cave 11:33

I wanted it to be a network of people who shared a similar interest because, again, Partners at Care International, we help our community but they're arms of it that we try to facilitate. So we came together with some persons who had like mind, which now make up the board, because they too were doing their own little bits and pieces in their sphere of influence, and therefore we came together, formed the board and, under the umbrella of Partners that Care International, we registered the charity.

Grantley Martelly 12:10

And what year was that?

Clarine Cave 12:12

That was in 2014.

Grantley Martelly 12:15

2014, okay. So now you have Partners that Care International, formally formed as an organization. So what are some of the things programs that you focus on? Where is your space that you're working in, and tell us about some of the things that you're doing?

Clarine Cave 12:33

Sure what we did when we first started. We worked with the Ministry of Education here in Barbados because, again, my love is for the arts. I've been a dancer for many, many, many years and but I've always known of dance from a ministry perspective, even when I stopped dancing, from a secular perspective.

Clarine Cave 12:58

Um, dance as a ministry fixes you the individual first, before you can minister to others, and therefore I always felt like this is a place where others need to know how to be able to fix themselves using these arts, using music, using theater. How can you get the help from a mental perspective, from a holistic and emotional, a spiritual perspective? How can you get that help using the arts? So I approached the Ministry of Education and we did two, three years biannually. We did a school's music festival.

Clarine Cave 13:42

They liked the idea. We ran a event on the road with it and we had a biannual competition within the schools, the secondary schools and the primary schools. What partners at CARE did was the developmental workshop and the ministry took care of all the music parts, all the other logistics of that event. So we would have that event biannually. We did it three cycles and then also on the back of that, we did our first food hamper distribution. Now, like I mentioned to you earlier, we would have done my husband and I would have done food hampers on a one-off, so we would have maybe given away two or three food hampers on a one-off. So we would have maybe given away two or three food hampers on occasions.

Clarine Cave 14:27

But this was a situation now where we were going to make it even bigger and try to reach more people. So, because of my contacts, having done guidance and counseling, I knew a lot of the guidance counselors in school because we would have gone to school together. So I contacted some of them and asked them to look for students within their schools who would have been at the bottom of the barrel, so to speak, and would need the help most because, you know, anybody at this point in life could do with a hamper.

Clarine Cave 15:02

We don't mind getting free food right, but I wanted to target those who were at the bottom of the bottom right, those who were finding it really really challenging to provide for their children during the long break of the summer.

Grantley Martelly 15:19

So in 2015,.

Clarine Cave 15:20

that's what we did. We started our first summer fiesta as a charity, a collective body, and we reached out. At the time it was to seven schools, seven secondary schools, and we did provide them with hampers for two months. The families that were selected they get a hamper in July and then they get another one in August.

Grantley Martelly 15:45

So can you explain to our listeners what a hamper is for those who may not know?

Clarine Cave 15:48

Oh, sure, a hamper is a basket of goodies, the essentials, the basic stuff. So your rice, your sugar, your pasta, your flour, those items that will make the basics for you to be able to have a meal for those two months. So is that, yeah, go ahead.

Grantley Martelly 16:11

I guess my question out of that then is is food insecurity a challenge in Barbados? I mean, why did you focus on this? Is that a big challenge for many people in Barbados?

Birth of Partners That Care International

Clarine Cave 16:23

Oh, definitely, and, like I said, we would have asked the guidance counselors to select students who their parents guidance counselors working with the students in the school will know the parents who are struggling, and we wanted to target those parents. Food insecurity is definitely a big issue here and it's gotten even worse since COVID with the amount of layoffs that we've had and the amount of single parent families that we have here on the island. So we wanted to be able to meet the government halfway, because the subsidy is provided for a lot of the students during the times that they're at school, so the students will get meals at school. But when they're not at school, then there's a challenge where parents are struggling to provide for their kids during the summer break. So that's because that subsidy is not available anymore, and so we thought, yeah, let's try to help in this way.

Grantley Martelly 17:29

So where are your donors coming from? Where are you getting the food, the money from donors coming from? Where are you getting the food, the money from? Is it donated by the grocery stores or from private assistance or government assistance?

Clarine Cave 17:41

We didn't get government assistance, but we targeted corporate Barbados and some of the local funders here, like the Sandy Lane Charitable Trust, the Maria Holder Trust. We reached out to charities like that as well on the island and they were able to help us. When we initially started the process, we also did a lot of out-of-pocket because, again, like I said, we were doing it before we got to this stage. So we know that, as a charity, as a board, we will put aside a little bit here, a little bit there. So we know that, as a charity, as a board, we will put aside a little bit here, a little bit there to ensure that we have what we needed to help with providing for more families.

Clarine Cave 18:23

There are schools that are reaching out because we've been doing this since, like I said, 2015. And we are now gearing up for one this coming summer. But there are schools that are not on our list. We're now up to 15 schools and there are schools that are not on our list. We've got 15 schools and also children who are in residential care, even though it may be temporary, or in foster care. So we also help the child care board here in Barbados with providing hampers for some of those students who return to their homes.

Grantley Martelly 19:02

So one of your programs, then, is the food insecurity and hampers in the summer, helping kids go back to school. What other programs do you run?

Clarine Cave 19:10

Okay, so we would have had the summer fiesta that we did for a season.

Grantley Martelly 19:15

That was dance right, Not the summer fiesta.

Clarine Cave 19:17

No, the music festival that we did for a season, that was music.

Grantley Martelly 19:22

Okay.

Clarine Cave 19:23

And then we had the summer fiesta, which is a food distribution, but then, in 2018, we started a program called Make Music Make a Difference. It's 3MD. This is where we use music as a catalyst for behavior change. Now, this was birthed out of the need that we saw emerging with the incurring and continuing violence among adolescent youth within secondary schools.

Grantley Martelly 19:54

So before you go on, you said it's called the 3MD.

Clarine Cave 19:57

Correct.

Grantley Martelly 19:58

What does that mean? Again, say that again.

Clarine Cave 20:00

Make music make a difference.

Grantley Martelly 20:03

Make music make a difference.

Clarine Cave 20:04

Three N's and a D.

Grantley Martelly 20:06

Okay.

Clarine Cave 20:10

Okay, go ahead, tell us about it. That was all gone. So we did. We started that program where we selected students. All we wanted these students to have was an interest. You did not have to be able to play an instrument, you did not have to be, you know, in a position where you had the experience. All we needed for you to do is to have an interest and be willing to learn, and there were students who came. When we started the pilot in 2018, we had 20 students and those students came through. The program did two years, so it's a two-year scholarship program for the student.

Clarine Cave 20:57

They don't have to provide anything, they don't have to come with an instrument, they don't have to come with transportation, unless the parent insists.

Clarine Cave 21:08

And we also provide them with a snack after school because, again, kids come and they would, would not? Some of them did not have something to eat during the course of the day while they're at school, so we provide them with something like to eat when they get to us. Um, we provide transportation, so we pick them up from school, bring them to the facility and then provide transportation to take them directly to their homes, because, again, we're dealing with at-risk and vulnerable youth. So let me me stick that in there. With at-risk and vulnerable youth getting to us would be a challenge because it's extra bus fare that parents will have to look for. It's also students who may be distracted on the way to the facility and may get into other things before they get to us. So to avoid all of that and to ensure that they maximize the two hours that they had with us, we picked them up from school and we took them home in the evening. So we started that program.

Grantley Martelly 22:06

That's a heavy commitment.

Clarine Cave 22:08

It is. It is a heavy commitment, but again, god, this is his idea. I'm just the catalyst for where it's going. I really could not have come up with this on my own, with persons who shared a similar thought or have a similar belief in that music can transform your life, whether it is in a negative way or in a positive way right, whether the music is negative or whether the music is positive, it can impact on your psyche and we wanted to be able to use the playing of music to help children to settle, to help them to be able to re-evaluate their actions, their emotions.

Clarine Cave 23:04

Along with that, we didn't just do the music, because it's a music program, yes, but it's more of a behavior change program. So we focused, yes, on the music, but the behavior is what we're really trying to get to.

Grantley Martelly 23:19

So tell us a little bit more about how you do that. So you have the children come in. What age is it these children? What's the age group?

Clarine Cave 23:28

Well, the age group is 13 to 16. We do have one or two who come in, a little come in and a little younger or a little older, and they're with us for two years. Right, and what we do? We take them through the process of understanding themselves and do self-regulation. How do I regulate my emotions? So first I have to identify what emotions I have.

Clarine Cave 23:50

So we go through that process of being able to identify your emotions. Why are you having this feeling? Why are you not having this feeling? And once you're able to regulate your emotion, you now have to learn to regulate that emotion in relation to somebody else, because you don't live in a silo. So we go through things like that. We go through behavior change interventions. Why would you react in a particular way? Do you even understand why you react in a particular way? We did things like personality profiling understanding your own personality, the strengths and weaknesses of your personality, and then how that can rub on the strengths or weaknesses of another person's personality, and a lot of the dynamics that we do in the soft classes that we like to call them. Then come out in the band sessions when they're going to a band, Because Bob next to you is supposed to be playing keys but he's not focused and you are, and you're getting agitated because Bob would not focus. What would you have learned in those soft skill sessions now that you can implement in the band session To help?

Clarine Cave 24:59

you to be a little bit more tolerant of Bob, or to pull Bob one side and pull him along, encourage him.

Food Insecurity Program and Hampers

Clarine Cave 25:05

And it's a phenomenon to watch where you have kids who would not care about each other coming from differing schools, and then they work and they, as a family, they work to encourage each other coming from differing schools, and then they work and they, as a family, they work to encourage each other. They work to just see themselves get better in this space. They let down their guards. They are so comfortable with the tutors and the facilitators. It's just an amazing thing to watch.

Grantley Martelly 25:31

That's great. That's a great approach. Now, if these children were not in this program, what likely would they be doing, or where would their life's direction be headed?

Clarine Cave 25:44

On a different trajectory, that's for sure. Some of them, some of the kids who came through the program we would have experienced students who are now at university, students who settled in their academics at secondary school, got reports back from the schools, from some of the teachers, where students were settling and paying more attention to their work. Yes, there were some who were being sent home and stuff like that. That stopped, so things like that did not happen anymore. There were students who took pride in coming and looking after the instrument that has been assigned to them. There are students who would talk back to parents or just be agitated in the home space, who are no longer doing this, who parents have commented.

Clarine Cave 26:40

I am not sure what it is that y'all are doing up there, but whatever it is, keep doing it, because you can see the noticeable changes in students. Now that comes over time and again, it is not a one strategy or a one stop fix all, but we saw changes. We saw small changes from a child making the decision to say okay, you know what, when I come up the stairs or when I come to this facility, I'm usually angry, I'm usually carrying the world on my shoulders, but when I come, and as much as I'm angry, I'm still going to sit in the session and listen and participate. So you'd hear comments coming from them like ma'am, I'm real tired this evening, I do not want to be here, I'm not coming back. And then the next week they're here and they're saying oh, so I thought you weren't coming back. So it's an interesting. Like I said, it's an interesting phenomenon. The children that we get at the beginning of this program are unidentifiable. At the end it's not the same child.

Grantley Martelly 27:52

A transformational change For all of them.

Clarine Cave 27:54

It's transformational and that is something for me that I think my team and I we understand that that's not something that you can pay us for, but it is a welcome engagement. It's something that is so fulfilling for all of us that we are not. We are all willing to put our hands to the cloud.

Grantley Martelly 28:13

Wow, that's, that's great. Now, is this a religious organization? That I mean, do you require the children to come from churches or to go to church, or that? Are you open to any child who's willing to participate?

Clarine Cave 28:57

We are open to any child who's willing to participate. They're selected by their schools, whether it be the music teacher, the guidance counselors, year aheads principal. We have principals knocking down our doors. They're only supposed to select four students and they're knocking. Can you give me another space? Can you give me another space? We don't have the space to give you another space.

Clarine Cave 29:20

But so we are a Christian organization because God is at the helm of our organization. He is the foundation of this organization. So we pray over the children. When I say pray, we come together as an admin team, as a management team, we come together. We pray for those children day in and day out. We also encourage them. So if there are some of them who go to church because some of them, as you know, Barbados is an island where children still do go to church, so some of them go to church Some of them are involved in activities at their churches. They're not necessarily building their relationship with the Lord, but they are involved in activities at their churches, and so we help to point them in that direction as well. We also like to help them with their in terms of when we have song selection, for example, You're selecting songs and I had one of our past students said to me, just you know, in passing, he said, ma'am, it is really interesting that we played all these songs and we've been engaging these songs.

Clarine Cave 30:36

But see, gospel music is something else. You know, it's really something else, it really changes you. And that was interesting for me to know because he's playing with bands outside of the program. He's just doing his thing musically. He just finished his associate degree at the Barbers Community College and he's doing things, he's going places. So he's seeing himself in spaces and doing things that if he had not settled, he says I would not be here if I had not settled down.

Grantley Martelly 31:13

It's good to have those testimonies. Are there other programs that you also run, or these two keep you busy and at full capacity?

Clarine Cave 31:23

Correct. We are at full throttle right now. There are things that I would like for us to get into because, again, music we provide that experience for these children. It's an experience that, under normal circumstances, a lot of these kids would not experience.

Clarine Cave 31:43

They would not have had the experience of playing an instrument or going anywhere to get a lesson by some of the top musicians in Barbados. That would not happen for them, and we are glad to be able to provide that for them at no cost to them, because, again, if these students had to pay to go to these classes, they would probably not go right. So there are other things that we would like to get into, but we want to focus more on this and continue to build this to the point where it becomes sustainable on its own without having to have. Well, we may still need funding, because we are a charity, we don't make money so typically, what kind of cost is involved in running a program like this?

Grantley Martelly 32:22

do you do you have like, uh, the, obviously I am assuming the, the food insecurity and the hampers, is one separate program and then the, the music and arts, is a separate program, funded separately and run separately. So how do you keep this going?

Clarine Cave 32:43

Well, we have to source funding. So for our hamper distribution, for example, instead of what we get in kind, it's like $30,000 Barbados to do that for two months for the amount of families that we try to cover, the amount of schools that we try to cover, amount of schools that we try to cover. And again, we are baby scraping the bucket when we talk about how many schools we reach. We're reaching 15 out of 20 somebody schools, and this is just secondary schools, it's not even primary schools but 15 schools.

Grantley Martelly 33:14

But how much? How many people does that actually represent? That you're?

Clarine Cave 33:18

helping. So we get two families from those 15 schools.

Grantley Martelly 33:21

So 30 families.

Clarine Cave 33:23

Right. And then we also have the families that come from the Child Care Board, where we will get probably 11 or so families, and then there's the Sunrise Early Education Development Center. We also assist them. This is children who may be autistic. So we help those students as well, those parents who have autistic children who are in that program. We also help them with hampers as well. That's about how many families as well. That's about how many families. That's last hamper distribution. We did 77 families.

Grantley Martelly 34:06

Total yes, 77 families total, and that's every year.

Clarine Cave 34:13

Yes, that's every year.

Grantley Martelly 34:15

Okay, and you can do that with that $30,000 budget. Yes, we can do that with that $30,000 budget.

Clarine Cave 34:21

Yes, we can do that with that $30,000 budget. Again, it's the essentials and, mind you, each family gets a hamper for two months.

Grantley Martelly 34:36

July and.

Clarine Cave 34:36

August. Well, so it's not 77 families, it's 77 hamper distributions 77 hampers Okay. Yeah.

Grantley Martelly 34:45

Yeah, or for the two months.

Clarine Cave 34:48

Yes.

Grantley Martelly 34:49

So then at the music program that's. That's a separate thing that's targeting 20 children right.

Clarine Cave 34:56

Well, that was the pilot program. We now have 40 students enrolled for the last two cohorts.

Grantley Martelly 35:02

We had in 2022 to 2024,.

Clarine Cave 35:06

we had 40 students, and 33 of those students completed the program.

Grantley Martelly 35:14

Yeah, what happened?

Clarine Cave 35:17

to the others.

Grantley Martelly 35:21

Well, they dropped out for reasons.

Clarine Cave 35:22

For different reasons they dropped out for different reasons.

Grantley Martelly 35:23

Yeah, for different reasons and how much did that program cost you to run?

Clarine Cave 35:28

well, it can go into the 100,000, 200,000 a year and it's a two year program yeah, did that include instruments and all of that? Yes, because again, a year and it's a two-year program. Yeah, did that include instruments and all of that? Yes, because, again, well, we have our catchment of instruments now. What we're working on now is being able to, for example, with the guitars Students come and because they don't have a guitar at home, it's hard for them to practice at home.

Clarine Cave 35:59

So we have to loan them the guitar. But remember, if you come on Tuesdays, you take the guitar, the guy that's coming on Monday. What is he going to use?

Grantley Martelly 36:11

That's what condition is it coming back in?

Clarine Cave 36:12

Yeah, the maintenance is high, as you would imagine, but still I mean it's high initially until they learn to care for them, until they learn to have a measure of respect for their instrument.

Grantley Martelly 36:33

Okay.

Clarine Cave 36:34

Right. And then there are instruments that cost more than others. So, for example, to buy a steel pan, we have to buy a steel pan from Trinidad, and a steel pan is going to cost us $1,500 US. That's just the pan. We also still have to get it here, so we have to ship it. We don't make instruments here in Barbados, so we have to ship them from the US or ship them from Trinidad, and that is cost that is incurred.

Clarine Cave 37:08

But our biggest cost more so than the instruments itself is our transportation costs, because we have to outsource the drivers. We don't have a vehicle. We have to outsource the drivers and a lot of the times they're taxi drivers who are taking off of a route or from taking a regular job that they may have, maybe at the airport or whatever, and they don't charge us the fee that will be charged to take each child to their respective homes. Wow so, but it's still high, right? We have to consider the rise and fall of diesel and the fact that we have drivers that are going as far as we're located in Wildey and we have drivers going as far as St Lucy to drop off students on evening, or coming from as far as St Peter from Coleridge and Prairie School to Wildey on evenings.

Grantley Martelly 38:03

So what other things do you want to share?

Clarine Cave 38:05

Taking them to the south of the island as well. So we have two sets of transportation, one going to the north and then one going to the south.

Grantley Martelly 38:12

The distances that Clarine refers to are about 13 miles in either direction from the Partners that Care headquarters. Okay, yeah, so what other things do you want to share?

Clarine Cave 38:26

The thing that I want the audience that is listening to understand that a lot of times we think that things are bigger than us and they can't be done. I used to think that this program was I still think that it is. Actually it was a huge undertaking, but I know that. I know that. I know that because God is in it, it's success is built on him. Yes, it's built on what we do and we have to report on successes and challenges and how we overcome the challenges. But at the end of the day, this is God ordained. I believe that within my heart, because I could not have come up with this. I could not have come up with every intricate part of this program where the transportation is concerned, where kids come and they're not focused and the reason why they're not focused is because they haven't eaten and then to say, oh yeah, you know what, let me find a way that we can give them a snack on evenings when they get here or after they've been here. So you get kids who get a snack before they do anything with their tutors, or sometimes they get it after. But I would not have known these things if it wasn't. You know, god, you know prompting you that this could be the issue.

Transformational Impact on Youth

Clarine Cave 39:47

A lot of times we we are met with energy that your children come with because of the things they would have gone through during the core of the day at school, because it's an after-school program. So they're coming with all that baggage from what would have transpired at school, whether it was interaction with teachers at school or whether it was interaction with another student. They're coming with a lot of baggage. This has nothing to do with the home environment. So this is just coming from school, right, and we would not have been able to navigate a lot of these things had it not been God on our side to help us, to equip us, to help us to strategize on how to reach these children, how to break down some of the walls, because these children are dealing with a lot of issues, right From abandonment from some of them, homelessness, right. There's one issue after the other and as children, they're not getting to be children. And then I have to go to school. On focus, we had a student in our pilot program who was looking after five younger siblings, had to get up, get them ready for school, take them to school before she went off to school, and that was becoming too much of a burden for her. Not that her parent wasn't trying to help, but the parent had to go off to work, and sometimes early, early in the morning, so she was left as a caregiver for the other siblings. So again, it seems sometimes like it is really bigger than we are.

Clarine Cave 41:23

But prayer, but God, and therefore I ride on that consistently. Sometimes I write my proposals and my budget seem like I don't know how people are going to give to this. I don't know where this money is going to be coming from. And then God shows up. So don't put your dreams aside, don't lay them down. Trust God, have faith that he can do more than you think he can do. If it's too big for you to handle, then it is a God, it's a God project, it's a God assignment.

Grantley Martelly 42:02

Yeah, if you can do it yourself, you don't need any help.

Clarine Cave 42:04

I'm telling you you don't need God.

Grantley Martelly 42:08

So I mean, this has been very interesting discussion and people may be wondering wow, how do we help and how do we get involved? And there's a number of ways I want to transition to now right now. But Partners that Care has a website, their own website, that you can look them up on partnersthatcareinternationalorg. Partnersthatcareinternationalorg. And you can give to the organization to that website. If you're in the United States or outside of the Caribbean, we my wife and I has a nonprofit called Shonky global that we have set up and that will be able to assist this organization, and that website is S H O N G I globalorg S-H-O-N-G-I dot org and you can donate there and we can get that to the organization as well, if you choose. And that's a 501c3 organization registered in the United States, so your contribution could be tax deductible if you want. That's a 501c3 organization registered in the United States, so your contributions could be tax deductible if you want them to be tax deductible.

Grantley Martelly 43:28

We just wanted to let you know that there's a relationship there and we wanted to get this word out to you that this organization, partners that Care International, is doing phenomenal work in Barbados, helping these young people, these families, in ways that many of them would not necessarily be able to get, and sometimes we in the United States or in Europe we have certain ways of doing things, but they don't always translate when you get into other countries. So we'll try to help from this side and try to get the funds to them, but also realizing that even on an island nation like Barbados, which is not very big, there are big issues and big challenges that need to be addressed. And every child we can help, wherever they are in the world, is a child whose potential we can get to see become what God created them to be, and let their future not be determined by the circumstances in which they find themselves, and help them to understand that where they are now does not necessarily mean that's where they're going to be in the future, but we can help them build a brighter future. So, clarine, thank you for the work that you're doing, thank you for PartnersCare, thank you for persisting and working through all the things to make something like this work.

Grantley Martelly 44:56

We will do whatever we can to help you, and if you're out there in the Caribbean, you can give to partnerscareinternationalorg, and if you're in the United States or Europe or other places outside the Caribbean, you can give to shangiglobalorg and just designate it for Partners that Care International, and we will make sure it gets there. Also, you can write us at above the noise 24, above the noise 24 at gmailcom, and we can get a message and we can get the email to clarine. Uh, clarine, I don't know if you want to share your email or if you prefer to come from us, but that's up to you.

Clarine Cave 45:38

Yeah, my email address is ccave and it's a long thing at partners that care international. So it's ccave at partners that care international dot org.

Grantley Martelly 45:53

Well, thank you. Any closing remarks?

How to Support and Get Involved

Clarine Cave 45:57

We really appreciate any assistance that we can get and for those who may want to give, they don't necessarily have to give financially, but they can give in their prayers, they can give in kind. If you have an instrument that you want to dust off and you know, box it up and send it to us, whether you are here in the region or in the US. We would appreciate that a lot because we need to help our students as much as we can. So thank you very much for listening and thanks, stu, for having me.

Grantley Martelly 46:28

You're welcome. My pleasure to have you. Remember to subscribe and leave us a rating. Ratings are very important to helping our podcast succeed in the podcast universe and helping it become known to other people. Email us your comments at abovethenoise24 at gmailcom. Abovethenoise24 at gmailcom. And follow us on Instagram and Facebook at AboveTheNoise24. Thank you for listening and please share this episode with a friend.