Rhonda Maingot
DIRECTOR & FINANCE COMMITTEE MEMBER
Rhonda Maingot, who was born in Trinidad, founded the Living Water Community after a religious conversion experience in 1975.
She has been instrumental in founding several other charitable religious institutions dedicated to children, the poor, the elderly, and the vulnerable in Trinidad and Tobago and throughout the Caribbean for over four decades.
Maingot has been actively involved with the Ave Maria Centre for Homeless Persons, Our Lady of the Wayside Halfway House for Abandoned Children, hospice programs, and treatment and counseling for young women, the aged, and substance abusers.
In addition to the many local chapters of her institutions, Maingot has established permanent missions in St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and the Netherlands Antilles. She also undertook a three-year mission to Russia after the end of communism in 1992.
Her Fountain of Hope Developmental Programme for Young Women in the Port of Spain has generated Vision of Hope, a small garment factory. The original Living Water Community has also generated catering and food service businesses.
In 1986, Maingot received the Humming Bird Gold Meal, the National Award of Trinidad and Tobago for Community Service.
In 1987, the Express Newspapers honored her with the “Individual of the Year Award.”
In 1993, Maingot founded the Trinity Communications Network, and in 1994, formed the Caribbean School for Catholic Communications. By 2002, she had expanded the radio and television enterprise into a multi-media concern with an internet presence, which generates employment.
In 2014, Maingot received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of the West Indies. And in 2019, she received the Franco-German Award for Civil Society Action for her decades of philanthropy and charity work for socially displaced people in Trinidad and Tobago.