PHILIPSBURG:---  The Department of Community Development, Family and Humanitarian Affairs (CDFHA), in collaboration with Leaders For Change Foundation, has launched the “Homelessness Crisis Response and Empowerment Project” – a six-month initiative spanning the second half of 2025 to provide both immediate relief and sustainable support for individuals experiencing homelessness.

This project is directly aligned with the Ministry’s vision, falls within CDFHA’s mandate, and is in accordance with the Government’s Governing Program under the pillar of social development. It underscores the importance of collaboration between government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), recognizing NGOs as essential grassroots partners who champion innovative ways to address challenges faced by vulnerable groups.

The project will respond to urgent needs through the distribution of hygiene kits, clean clothing, reusable water bottles, and meals, while also conducting weekly outreach visits to assess needs, build trust, and offer continued support. Beyond immediate aid, the initiative will explore long-term solutions such as skills training, livelihood opportunities, and partnerships to help beneficiaries work toward self-sufficiency.

Over 100 individuals are expected to receive direct assistance through the project, along with resources to improve their health, dignity, and quality of life. Data collected during the initiative will guide future interventions, strengthen policy development, and ensure a more targeted and effective response to the homelessness crisis.

“ Homelessness is not merely a housing issue, but a human issue that demands compassion, collaboration, and concrete action,” stated Minister Brug, Minister of Public Health, Social Development and Labor (VSA)“Through this project, we are combining immediate relief with long-term empowerment to restore dignity and provide real opportunities for those in need. By working hand-in-hand with NGOs like Leaders For Change, we are strengthening resilience and building a community where no one is left behind.”

If you know someone who is homeless, sleeping rough, or at risk of homelessness, please contact +1 (721) 523-4160 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

PHILIPSBURG:--- Minister of Public Health, Social Development and Labor (VSA), Richinel Brug, extends heartfelt congratulations to Mrs. Peggy-Ann Dros Richardson, her dedicated team within the Department of Social Services, and Notary Mingo for organizing and executing a highly successful public information session on “Preparing for the Unexpected: Estate Planning & Wills” held on August 13, 2025. The event, hosted in collaboration with the Mingo Civil Law Notary Office, addressed the critical topics of estate settlement procedures, the importance of wills, and the steps involved in their preparation. But in addition to recording your wishes, there was also plenty of room for clarification about relationships that are not formally documented. For example, when living together, certain rights can be acquired. This led to interesting conversations with significant consequences. The Government Administration Building’s Room 1 and Room 2 were filled, with a number of attendees unfortunately turned away due to space limitations. “I knew this event would be a success,” stated Minister Brug, “especially given that similar sessions were hosted twice last year, both of which drew strong attendance. The fact that we had such an overwhelming turnout once again shows how deeply this topic resonates with our community across all walks of life.” The Minister expressed hope that the program would be repeated and suggested that future sessions be recorded and shared with the wider public to ensure that as many residents as possible can benefit from this important information. “These sorts of initiatives, developed and implemented by the hardworking teams within the Ministry of VSA, make me proud to serve,” Minister Brug added. “It is clear that our ministry is not only working but also making a meaningful impact in people’s lives by providing them with knowledge that empowers and protects them and their families.” The Ministry of VSA encourages residents to remain engaged with future public information sessions and to take proactive steps in their estate planning.

PHILIPSBURG:---Dr. Dannabang Kuwabong’s new book, examining the work of St. Martin writer Lasana M. Sekou, was launched and presented at international conferences in St. Martin and in Prague, Czechia, this summer.

Titled Rhetoric of Resistance, Labor of Love: The Ecopoetics of Nationhood in the Poetry and Prose of Lasana M. Sekou, the publication is now set as required reading for the Caribbean Theory graduate course at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) this fall, said Kuwabong.

Published by House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP), the book is possibly the first to critically analyze original writings of how St. Martin people were treated as immigrants in countries and territories in the Caribbean and beyond, from the late 1800s to the late 1950s, said HNP president Jacqueline Sample.

“In this groundbreaking study, Dannabang Kuwabong arouses our critical curiosity, our political consciousness, and our aesthetic sensibility,” said Mark Andrews of Vassar College. “He offers a wide-ranging exploration of the multi-layered and richly imaginative creative works of St. Martin’s leading poet, Lasana M. Sekou.”    

The book’s five chapters offer an in-depth analysis of Sekou’s poetry, fiction, and essays, including Brotherhood of the Spurs, Love Songs Make You Cry, National Symbols of St. Martin, Mothernation, and The Salt Reaper with its mythopoem about the Great Salt Pond.

While “the debilitating psychosocial cognitive effects of poverty and immigration” on St. Martiners is a key theme in Chapter 1, it represents only a fraction of the issues explored in Rhetoric of Resistance, Labor of Love.

Topics like tourism, agriculture, environmental degradation, cultural amnesia, political betrayal, resilience, succession land as a core cultural value, Dutch and French dependency, the fear of and seminal call for independence, and the now challenged historical unity of the island’s people are discussed not lightly or as dogma, but through sociocultural and historical interpretation. These themes are also explored with careful attention to literary quality.

In the book’s “Fanonian Introduction to Lasana M. Sekou,” Kuwabong describes Sekou’s outlook as “revolutionary”—echoing the no-nonsense Trinidadian critic Gordon Rohlehr, who elsewhere called Sekou the “poet and militant publisher from St. Maarten” (2022).

Kuwabong highlights Sekou’s apparent “decision to write to, from, for, and with his people, and not pander to the international gendarmes of literature who play a role in determining the authors from the Caribbean who are academically elevated.”

Another contentious point, Kuwabong writes, is that Sekou’s “liberationist poetics … may not resonate with the pundits of post-colonial literary studies, as Sekou’s combative and counter-discursive poetics are supposedly counter-progressive and out of sync with their contemporary realities.”

Recognizing that Sekou either doesn’t care about what external policing does, says, or feels—or simply refuses to sugarcoat St. Martin’s colonial and divided-island realities—Kuwabong dives headlong into comparisons between Sekou’s work and the profound nationalist themes found in the writings of Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, as well as Patrick Chamoiseau’s complex framing of Caribbean identity.

The St. Martin writer’s pan-Caribbean, pan-African, and internationalist poetry, uncompromising in its critique of class, race, and national, regional, or global structures of oppression, also comes under Kuwabong’s sharp literary lens, particularly in his analysis of Sekou’s works such as Nativity, Maroon Lives, and Book of the Dead.

The final chapter presents the writer as “a witness to national consciousness,” and it is as much about Sekou as it is a signal—a dialogue—with current and future writers and artists from St. Martin and the wider Caribbean.

Kuwabong, who is originally from Ghana, also references earlier “critical appraisals” of Sekou’s work by Fabian Adekunle Badejo (St. Martin), Howard Fergus (Montserrat/UWI), Emilio Jorge Rodríguez (Cuba), and Sara Florian (Italy).

“What’s truly new is how Dr. Kuwabong draws on trauma scholars to rigorously explore, maybe for the first time in relation to Lasana’s work, the Gothic themes and family traumas tied to individual redemption and community healing of St. Martiners, which Lasana writes about in original and sometimes frightening ways,” said Sample.

Kuwabong’s Rhetoric of Resistance, Labor of Love is, overall, “a most timely, insightful appraisal of Lasana M. Sekou’s important body of poetry and prose: a critical assessment of his ecopoetics of trauma and healing to move the people of St. Martin beyond a historical and cultural amnesia, toward liberating forms of community,” said Keith Cartwright, Chair and Professor of English at the University of North Florida. “And beyond St. Martin, charting a mode of witness that urges readers, and calls nations to action.”

“This book triggered the very same feeling I had when I read for the first time the literature of Aimé Césaire, Kamau Brathwaite or George Lamming: revelation and consciousness of Caribbean identity, history, and landscape,” said David Anuar, award-winning writer, historian, and literary critic at the Foundation for Mexican Letters.

Kuwabong is being warmly welcomed by colleagues as he returns with the new scholarly publication for the fall semester at UPR, where he is teaching literary criticism, Gothic and trauma literature, Caribbean studies, and women’s studies.

“We’re delighted to congratulate Prof. Dannabang Kuwabong for the publication of his new book Rhetoric of Resistance, Labor of Love: The Ecopoetics of Nationhood in the Poetry and Prose of Lasana M. Sekou,” said Sargasso, the peer-reviewed journal of literature, language, and culture edited at UPR.

Rhetoric of Resistance, Labor of Love is available at Arnia’s Bookstore in St. Martin, from the author in Puerto Rico, and online at libroslatinos.com, said Sample.

PHILIP[SBURG (DCOMM):--- The Collective Prevention Services (CPS) is calling on households and businesses to continue to take their own steps after every rainfall event in eliminating mosquito breeding sites to minimize mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue effectively. 

This past weekend’s rainfall from Hurricane Erin serves as a reminder that any stagnant water that may have collected in and around homes and businesses should be removed.

Mosquitoes can breed in as little as a half-inch of water.  Source reduction is the key to decreasing the mosquito population. Due to the tropical nature of our climate, breeding habitats are in abundance, and many of them are unfortunately man-made.

Breeding sites include tin cans, old tires, empty paint cans, buckets, old saucers, flowerpots, cemetery urns/vases, old pet dishes, unused plastic swimming pools, boats on dry dock, used food containers, plastic drinking cups, plastic shopping bags, or other containers or plants that collect and hold water.

Source reduction begins by covering, removing, or turning over containers, artificial artifacts, and unused boats that could serve as potential breeding sites. Additionally, it involves properly maintaining the yard and surrounding area by trimming overgrown vegetation. Every resident on the island should comply with the source reduction to have an impact on mosquitoes in the community.

A few tips and reminders: Dispose of any unused pots or bins, or turn them upside down to prevent water collection. Keep trash bins covered. If possible, drill drain holes into the bottoms of unused containers. Conduct a weekly assessment in and around your home and workplace. Also, keep a fine-mesh screen over rain barrels, water tanks, and cistern outlets. Clean your rain spouts regularly to ensure water can flow freely and not become stagnant. Also, properly remove old, unused tires.

Dengue can become a life-threatening illness, and everyone must be aware of the symptoms and take the necessary precautions to prevent further mosquito breeding and transmission.

People become infected with the dengue virus when an infected Aedes aegyptus or Aedes albopictus mosquito feeds on or bites them. Usually, between four and seven (4-7) days after a bite from an infected mosquito, people typically begin to show symptoms.

Persons with dengue may present with a fever, nausea/vomiting, rash, muscle/joint pain (myalgia/arthralgia), headache, retro-orbital pain (pain behind the eyes), and petechiae (red/purple spots on skin).  If you have a fever and two or more of these symptoms, you may be suspected of having dengue.  You should visit your house doctor and be tested for dengue.

In addition to eliminating mosquito breeding sites, use mosquito repellent to prevent the mosquitoes from feeding. Follow the instructions on the product label. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are attracted to dark spaces and clothing at dusk and dawn. It is recommended to wear light coloured clothing during those times.

To report any concerns with mosquito breeding or for any assistance, contact CPS’s vector control team by phone +1(721) 520-4161, 542-1222/1570, or 914.

Vector control can also be contacted by email at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.