Ohana Refuge for family well-being

Ohana Refuge founders Jamila Sargent, Annisha Lesaldo and Diandra Seemungal at Epic (enhancing personality influencing children) at the Munroe Road Evangelical Bible Church.  -
Ohana Refuge founders Jamila Sargent, Annisha Lesaldo and Diandra Seemungal at Epic (enhancing personality influencing children) at the Munroe Road Evangelical Bible Church. -

Ohana Refuge had an epic 2019. The NGO was formed in September 2019 and within three months held a teens conference and created donation boxes for children’s homes.

Ohana was created by Annisha Lesaldo, 37, Diandra Seemungal, 32, and Jamila Sargent, 32.

The three women are passionate about mental health issues. Seemungal has her own practice – Seemungal Counselling and Coaching Services, while Lesaldo and Sargent are studying for their master’s in counselling psychology. Lesaldo is a teacher at Munroe Road Government Primary School and Sargent is an academic adviser at Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business.

Ohana means family and family means no one gets left behind. Preservation of marriage and family life is a core value in Ohana Refuge.

Lesaldo always wanted to have an NGO that helped children, families and women specifically. She and Seemungal began chatting about the NGO and made Ohana a reality.

“It’s a family refuge. A safe haven for families,” said Lesaldo.

The first thing the freshly minted NGO did was hold a conference for 30 teens in Cunupia called Epic – enhancing personality influencing children – at the Munroe Road Evangelical Bible Church.

Self-esteem, confidence, bullying and how to be a good friend were among some of the topics taught.

At Epic, the teens were taught about differences in personalities. Some people may be introverts while others people are extroverts.

“We wanted teenagers to understand why they don’t get along with some of their friends or some of the people around them… We were just trying to give them an understanding of their personality types,” Seemungal said.

Epic also spoke to the teens about drugs, drug abuse, addiction and peer pressure. Around the time of the conference, the zesser pill was becoming more well known by the public. The teens were shown pictures of the zesser pills so they would be aware of what it looked like.

“We tied it (drug use) in with self-esteem and knowing who you are because once you know who you are, no one can just come up to you and say hey, take this,” Seemungal said.

The teens discussed self-awareness as well as identity.

“We really wanted them to understand their identity in terms of who they are so they don’t give into peer pressure,” Seemungal said.

The trio got feedback from the parents who said they saw an improvement in their children who had low self-esteem.

San Fernando, Laventille and Tobago were the next places the Ohana team wanted to host Epic. Right before lockdown went in effect, they were planning a mental health walk.

During Christmas Ohana co-ordinated a box of love initiative where people in their community put together a box of any type of items – both fun and practical – for children homes.

Boxes of love Ohana Refuge donated to homes for children. -

“We didn’t limit the people to what they wanted to put in it, We thought it would have been shoe size, but it turned out to be grocery box sizes because people were so happy to be involved.”

The boxes of love were delivered to children homes around the country including two in Tobago. After the dispersal to the children’s homes, there were families who were still willing to donate, so Ohana distributed those packages to Venezuelan migrant families.

They wanted to have another Epic in 2020, but covid19 thwarted them.

The Ohana trio hopes to still have their box of love Christmas initiative, but are still uncertain because of covid19.

Having to change their plans for 2020, Ohana refocused on mental health care for anyone who was struggling.

Ohana has been offering free counselling to anyone who was suffering psychologically because of covid19.

Instead of having face to face counselling sessions, they used Zoom to meet with people who needed therapy. Seemungal met with people on Zoom to help them cope during lockdown.

“People were really affected by covid19. They were not coping properly. They were getting stressed out a lot, becoming anxious and depressed,” Seemungal said.

Regardless of mental health status, Seemungal believes mental health is for everyone and mental health affects a person’s physical health.

“Mental health is for everyone. I am a counselling psychologist and I have my own therapist. It’s just like how we’ll need a doctor one day.”

She wants people to understand mental health is not something to be ashamed about and everyone needs a trained professional to talk to in a non-biased non-judgemental way.

Seemungal offered her paying clients a discount on Zoom sessions. She got a lot of new clients during lockdown.

“A lot of people think therapy is about helping you with a problem. Therapy is so much more than that.”

The break in routine the lockdown caused, she realised, affected many of her clients.

Motivational speaker Micah Connor addresses teens at the Ohana Refuge Epic event at the Munroe Road Evangelical Bible Church. -

“The structure is really important. We are so accustomed to get up at a particular time, have breakfast at this particular time, drop your kids off at this time and you go to work at this time and come back home and with all this free time, they were being affected because of the lack of structure,” she said.

She said when people tell others they see a therapist, some think they are crazy, but everyone needs someone to talk to who is non-judgemental and there to help.

In Trinidad when people hear mental health or mental illness, Seemungal said people think about the St Ann’s Hospital and those people seeking mental health care are labelled negatively. However, Ohana tries to break that stigma by posting frequently on their social media about mental health issues.

Ohana wants to share the message that mental health and taking care of your mental health is not only for people who are diagnosed with a mental health issue.

“Mental health is just as important as physical health and it feeds one into the other. Educating the people, empowering the people to know that it’s not a sign of weakness to reach out for help or just need to talk to someone, someone who is not too close to you because you might talk to one of your friends and they might work you up,” Seemungal said.

Having a good relationship with a therapist, Seemungal said is important. If they cannot help the people who reach out to Ohana they will try to connect them with an appropriate person who can.

“We encourage you, if you have any sexual issues in your relationships, we can source psycho-sexual therapist for you in your marriage. It is not so much about keeping the information for you to ourselves, or within the group, once we can source someone for you who would be that best match for you, we would do that as well.”

Seemungal tries to develop a good rapport with her clients and often gets sad when her clients leave.

“When it is time for the clients to leave, it’s a bittersweet moment,” Seemungal said.

They also have plans for taking Ohana’s work regionally. Epic is one programme they want to work on in Guyana, St Vincent and other Caribbean countries. They hope to execute those plans through their diverse network.

When organising the boxes of love in Tobago, they got free airline tickets and other support from their network.

“We did not go public to ask for help, yet through our power of networking, we got so many people to help. I could only imagine if we were to go public,” Seemungal said.

In years to come, the Ohana trio wants to have a physical building where they can create a refuge for battered women and children.

For now, they are hoping covid19 would not derail their box of love initiative for Christmas. This year, instead of donating to children’s homes they want to donate to schools.

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