Before coming to Trinidad, Manuel was a lawyer who rose to the rank of Supreme Court judge in Venezuela.
Due to concerns for his safety due to his role as a judge, he was forced to leave. His life and that of his family depended on it.
“I came to Trinidad in 2018 with my family – my two children and my wife. We’ve been here for four and a half years. We entered legally from the port of Cedro and stayed.”
After leaving everything they had in Venezuela, Manuel said he did some odd jobs — anything legal that would allow him to earn a few dollars to support his family.
“We worked in everything – as a security guard in Gulf City Mall, a fisherman in Icacos and I sell food until midnight in San Fernando. We find in Trinidad and Tobago, opportunities, we do not find a gift. We find a safe place for us to stay here.”
Despite the many challenges they have faced since coming to this country, Manuel said he and his family found guardian angels through the Living Water Community.
He told Loop that the Community is an open door through which migrants and refugees can find solutions to many of the issues they face as they try to navigate life in Trinidad and Tobago.
Having been forced to leave a 20-year career in the legal field, Manuel said he is grateful to the Living Water Community for providing an avenue where he could still work in the field he loves so much.
“I work at Living Water in the legal department. I am a lawyer in Venezuela. I worked for 15 years as a judge in the Supreme Court in Venezuela. I fled my country for my personal safety,” he said. “When I came from Venezuela my life changed 180 degrees. The Living Water Community has given me the opportunity to return to work with the law. It also helped me understand Trinidadian law, especially the immigration process.”
Still facing his challenges, Manuel is passionate about his role as a paralegal at LWC. Having first-hand knowledge of the struggles refugees and migrants face, he is happy to now have the opportunity to help others the way he and his family were helped.
What is the Living Water Community?
The Living Water Community is a Catholic Church Community founded in 1975.
Since its inception, this Community has had at its core a group of people dedicated to advancing its cause, as an advocate for the most vulnerable in society.
The LWC consists of several ministries, one of which is the Ministry of Migrants and Refugees.
This ministry has proven to be a lifeline for refugees fleeing their respective countries and traveling to Trinidad in search of a better life.
Meet Briceida Coa
Like Manuel, Briceida Coa left everything she owned in Venezuela in search of an improved quality of life in Trinidad.
“It was not easy. Sometimes, when I think back, I start to cry…in Venezuela we had no food, no money, nothing. We had families, we had houses, but we didn’t have food, education and all that. I don’t plan to go there anymore because my situation there is not the best.”
Life is still uncertain, she admits, but she’s grateful for the help she got from the Living Water Community: it’s her home away from home.
Now employed as a Wait Support at Living Water Community, she said she is grateful for the opportunities the organization has provided her.
“My dream is to be better than me,” she said. “I want more. I want to be treated as a person, as a human.”
While she admits there are more opportunities here, Briceida said walking the streets of Trinidad and Tobago is not always easy as she has to deal with xenophobia overshadowed by sexual harassment.
The Living Water base, she said, is her safe space.
“Living Water is a big part of my life because they opened the door for me and I really feel like this is my home. When I came here I couldn’t speak English and it was really hard to understand so many things.”
Living Water Community, an advocate for inclusion
LWC Defense Associate Rosanny Salazar said loop that the integration and active participation of migrants with the local community represents an opportunity that promotes inclusion and facilitates the adaptation of both populations.
“Looking at a reciprocal relationship in which natives can provide those opportunities for growth to migrants, and migrants at the same time can demonstrate the positive things they are willing to give to the host community. When a migrant is accepted, he/she has the benefit of feeling at home, respected, valued and definitely taken into consideration to give the best of oneself,” she said.
This is in line with the core mandate of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
Mariam Khokhar, Community-Based Protection Officer of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), said:
The mandate of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to provide international protection and solutions for asylum seekers and refugees is underpinned by a responsibility to the people we serve. This includes the meaningful participation and involvement of asylum seekers and refugees to contribute from program development to its evaluation, as well as empowering forcibly displaced girls, boys, women and men in their diversity to use their capacities to support each other. and the host community. It’s simple: asylum seekers and refugees are better able to share their concerns, explain their priorities and propose solutions. UNHCR and its partners in Trinidad and Tobago – including the LWC – operate through this lens.
Ensuring the participation and inclusion of asylum seekers and refugees means helping them regain a sense of well-being and choice after the trauma of forced displacement. It means supporting them to better integrate and contribute to their host country. UNHCR is proud to partner with LWC in empowering asylum seekers and refugees to return through community outreach – providing a friendly face to make this new and strange country a little more welcoming to other forcibly displaced people and to provide support from a place of residence experience.
The Living Water Community is one of UNHCR’s implementing partners in Trinidad and Tobago, helping to provide refugees and migrants in situations of vulnerability with that sense of agency.
UNHCR, through the generous support of the European Union’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operation (ECHO), funds this outreach and support programme.
Coordinator of the Ministry at LWC, said Rochelle Nakhid loop that she is a strong believer in acknowledging one’s position of power and privilege, for her, is essential in understanding how to be accountable to the people they serve and work with marginalized populations in generally.
“Involving our customers on our staff is a super powerful internal accountability mechanism and helps us ensure quality programming and most importantly profitability. We have also come to greatly appreciate the value of lived experience as essential to successful program design, even more so than learned experience, since often the problem we see is translating theory into practice in real-life situations.Beyond inclusion, it is most important that migrants and refugees in our team feel like they belong. We want them to feel First, to feel included, we want them to know that their voice is meaningful and we care about their well-being. We want them to feel like they have a stake in everything we do, ownership of our services, and that they have the opportunity to participate in shaping the political, social and cultural structures we aim to influence and change. Where they can face xenophobia and bullying in the world, once they walk through our doors, we want them to feel that sense of home, of belonging.”
