(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Friday, 13 July 2007 will live on in our memory at the CARICOM Secretariat as a very dark day. That was the day when a light in our lives went out. Yvonne Holder, our dear colleague and friend, was a most vibrant and beautiful figure, synonymous with light, with calm, with serenity, and with optimism. She brought a positive aura into any group or event. Her smile was ever present, ever infectious. Today, one week after that fateful day, I find it difficult, almost incongruous, to refer to her in the past tense.
Even in the midst of our grief, however, we must focus on the gift of light she brought to us and to her surroundings.
Yvonne joined the CARICOM Secretariat in July 1995 as Technical Coordinator of our Technical Action Services Unit popularly called TASU. The record will show that I myself (along with the then Deputy Secretary-General and the then Assistant Secretary-General of the Human and Social Development Directorate) presided over her interview for a position in Human Resource Development. They tell me that it was unusual for me to participate in such an interview. I therefore lay claim to the perspicacity that brought Yvonne into the Secretariat to begin a journey that would bring acclaim to the entire Caribbean Community. Yvonne was not judged to be the best suited to the post for which she was interviewed. However, the West Indian Commission’s Report, Time for Action 1992, had called for a mechanism that would respond rapidly to the requests of Member States for assistance in removing hurdles to the implementation of regional decisions. We saw in Yvonne someone with a unique talent and capacity to help deal with that implementation deficit. She seemed eminently suited to assist with the development of that implementation mechanism.
Yvonne was therefore duly tasked with taking this new mechanism the Technical Action Service Unit (TASU) from its embryonic stages to a unit that would quickly become the face of the Secretariat in the Member States and something of a flagship among the work programmes of the Secretariat.
To many in the Member States of the Caribbean Community, Yvonne became a key focal point in the Secretariat. It was to her and TASU that they most frequently looked to for support and guidance. It was with her, that they discussed their needs and developed projects in order to position themselves to become compliant with the terms of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas which created the Caribbean Community and, consequently, to participate vigorously in CARICOM.
Yvonne’s management of that vital component of the Secretariat’s mandate left nothing to be desired. In fact, TASU has been consistently hailed by Member States and the donor and international development community as an international best practice. Thanks to her personable style and professional management of TASU, including timely reporting to donors, it has become one of our consistently well-resourced programmes.
One of her first missions after she started with the Secretariat and TASU in 1995, was to Suriname. She travelled there to consult with the then newest Member State of the Community on the design of activities and programmes to help bring Suriname up-to-speed with the workings of CARICOM. That, marked the beginning of her love affair with that country, where she was to become most well-known, well-respected and well-loved and where she reciprocated in full.
Fittingly, Suriname was the location of her final assignment. I am informed that the President of Suriname – who called me on the occasion of her passing (twice) in his farewell to Yvonne last Sunday, welcomed the honour of having Suriname being the “port from which she would choose to leave this earth” on her final journey.
This mutual love and respect was evident in many ways including the way in which Suriname treated her untimely passing at the governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental levels. This was demonstrated when her earthly remains were flown back to Guyana accompanied by several senior representatives of the Government of Suriname, of the Suriname Chamber of Commerce and of an organization unique among Member States, the CARICOM Awareness Building Unit, CABU. Up to this morning as I arrived at the service I received a message from the Minister of Trade and Industry of Suriname, and I quote:
“Mrs Holder was a devoted professional, whose courteousness, effectiveness and dedication as Coordinator of TASU was instrumental in helping Suriname become Single Market Ready. All of my staff, who worked with her, knew her to be a remarkable professional and a wonderful person. Her contribution to regional integration was, in its own way, very significant, especially for Suriname.”
More recently, TASU has been assigned the task of coordinating a programme between the Secretariat and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to further develop south–south cooperation. In furtherance of this project, Yvonne was part of a CARICOM/UNFPA team which visited Indonesia two months ago, as guest of the UNFPA and the Secretariat of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
The respect in which Yvonne was held both as a professional and as a human being is perhaps best captured in the response by one of the UNFPA members of the team to the news of her death. The UN official wrote:
“Yvonne was such a lovely woman, full of life and a brilliant ambassador of CARICOM. I was so proud of her as she represented the CARICOM Agenda with the colleagues at the ASEAN Secretariat in Indonesia.
When I was called by a friend an hour ago, I doubted her and am very sad at the news. Guyana and the Caribbean region has lost a brilliant mind.”
Never have truer words been spoken.
In similar vein, another UNFPA colleague wrote:
“This is the start of a very sad week. Ms. Holder was on my mind all weekend as I thought of the work we were doing together. Touching base with her this morning [Monday] was my first priority. This has been shattered by the sad news when I walked into office.
For me, I have lost a professional, most respected and visionary colleague. UNFPA, CARICOM and the Region have lost a dedicated regional advocate. We will remain indebted to her for her contribution to regional development and for strengthening our programme of cooperation to which she was so committed.
Please convey my condolences to colleagues in CARICOM. I know it is a grave loss but we can be comforted by the fact that she stood as a star on her stage. Now that she has departed, she leaves for us great and fond memories and knowledge of how we can work better together.”
But they were not the only ones to express such grief.
Similarly, the colleagues from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) wrote expressing their deep sorrow at the news of Yvonne’s passing.
Finally, a colleague from a Member State, Jamaica, wrote:
“Yvonne Holder’s life and work should inspire all of us to new levels of resolve in strengthening Our Caribbean Community for the benefit of its people. Here in Jamaica, we are so inspired. As a fitting tribute to her indomitable spirit and a lasting monument to her excellent work, we look forward to forging new collaborative approaches with the CARICOM Secretariat and other Member States to further advance the work of our Caribbean Community of nations.”
This sample of the tributes pouring into the Secretariat demonstrates the esteem in which Yvonne was held. They speak of her in terms of her “enthusiasm and vitality”. They describe her as “a tireless champion”; “a brilliant ambassador”; “full of life”; “most respected”. Indeed, as I listened to the tribute before (Bishops’ High School) I realize she has been this way for quite a long time.
Yvonne’s light did not only shine outside of the Secretariat. We, her colleagues in the Secretariat, were aware of and indeed appreciated all of these qualities and more, and we treasured them while she was among us. Our internal tributes reflect on these and more, since she touched the lives of each and every one of us. Last Friday when we got the devastating news we immediately called a staff meeting there were some hundreds in the conference Room, yet you could have heard a pin drop, it was a moving statement of how the Secretariat as a body felt. Yesterday, I had the unpleasant task of informing CARICOM Heads of Government in person at a Meeting in Barbados (having already sent them officials communication) where we were consulting with the Canadian Prime Minister. The reaction and the look on their faces spoke volumes.
Having spent a great deal of her professional life in the field of education, Yvonne treated her entire life and work as a teaching and learning experience. Her staff certainly learnt from her and has felt confident enough to carry on the work of TASU in the week since her passing, despite the pall that has hung over the Secretariat.
I do not know if she was fully aware of how much she was teaching us, but she has left us with a legacy of a model for senior managers, a consummate professional, and a visionary colleague. She has taught us what it is to be committed, indefatigable, calm and effective, and, above all, still a loving human being. We thank her for her presence among us.
We can only hope that her sojourn with us in the Secretariat was also a learning experience for her and that her passing was ordained at a time when she had accomplished her mission of teaching and learning. That, however, makes it no less difficult to view her death as untimely.
To you, Terry Holder, her husband, to her children – Andrea, Marc, Suzanne, Neal, Duane, Dawn, Shireen and Beverley – to her only sibling, Terry Stuart, and to her many relatives, I offer you the heartfelt condolences of the entire Caribbean Community and of the Members of Staff of the Secretariat and wish you God’s peace and comfort in these difficult times.
