For 35 years, Food For The Poor (Guyana) Inc. was known for hampers and emergency relief. Today, the organisation is rewriting that story. “The focus is no longer solely on giving you a hamper every month,” says CEO Andrea Benjamin. “We want to empower you so you can build your family, and together you can build your community.”

That shift is embodied in Braids of Hope, a youth initiative tackling stubborn unemployment among young people in urban and peri-urban Georgetown. Fifteen women signed up; thirteen graduated from the first cohort. The programme goes beyond braiding technique — participants learned around a dozen styles, plus pricing, marketing, hygiene, customer service, and how to register a business, with staff later guiding graduates through the Guyana Development Bank’s loan process.

One graduate, Katina Macey, a mother of six, says the training reshaped both her confidence and her plans. Braiding had long been “a piece of my lifestyle,” she explains, but the programme gave her the pricing and communication skills to formalise it into a business — one she hopes to combine with food and eventually pass on by teaching her daughters. She credits her husband’s support in helping her balance the course with raising her children.

Benjamin says the ripple effects extend to entire households: several graduates brought their children to the graduation, a reminder that investing in one woman means investing in her family and community. Braids of Hope sits alongside other initiatives — the Youth Enhancement Project, an adult literacy programme, and community mentorship efforts — all built on the same principle: lasting capacity, not short-term dependency.

“We don’t train you and leave you behind,” Benjamin says. For Macey and her fellow graduates, that promise is already becoming a business.