Welcome to our New Board Member!

We welcome Anna Maria Mora, from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, to the IAC Executive Council. Anna Maria will be the IAC Regional Representative for the Caribbean Region and we wish her every success in this voluntary post. Please find Anna Maria's short Biography below: 

Anna Maria Mora Counselling Psychologist, Immediate Past President, Trinidad and Tobago Association of Psychologists (TTAP). A trained teacher, she worked at primary and secondary levels. She became one of a group of locallytrained Guidance Officers to form a Guidance Unit for Secondary Schools and published a booklet of poetry written by teenagers titled “Youth in Search of Self.” This booklet is lodged at the Library of Congress. After fourteen (14) years in the Government Service, she was accepted and completed a Master of Arts and Master of Education in Counselling Psychology at Columbia University in New York City, with emphasis on counselling adults and adolescents from diverse ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. She returned home and found youth services sadly lacking in communities. Mariama Children’s Museum & Teen Turf: the Counselling and Activity Center for Children and Adolescents came into being. It is a non-judgmental, caring, safe, community-based space for young people to gather, learn and dream. It is mostly self-funded and in its twenty-seventh year. Anna Maria received a fellowship from the Dutch Government to study “Development, Law and Social Justice: A Human Rights Perspective” at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands. A published author, with two books “Parents are you listening?” and “Children are you listening?-“The Importance of Balance in Life and Being a Success.” This latter is a Workbook for Children and Teens. A Carnival Band was produced in 2016 using traditional hand-held stilts to teach youth the importance of balance. She produced a video, which is used as a youth-training video, under the title: “Our Culture Must Teach Positive Values.” Anna Maria is also a regular columnist in local newspapers and magazines, discussing issues which affect family life, children’s rights, youth, their personal-social development and potential for success, as they journey to adulthood. She presented at IAC’s Conference 2004, Jamaica, on the “State of Guidance and Counselling in Trinidad and Tobago,” and received the Hans Z. Hoxter Fellowship to attend IAC’s conference 2012, Manila, and The Philippines where she presented the paper: “Counselling to Advocate for the Human Rights of Children and Young People.” Anna Maria believes that mental ill-health which is plaguing our world today, can be addressed and resolved through the process of counselling. In the Caribbean, counselling is still not accepted as the avenue through which citizens can make wise choices and change the course of their lives, and their countries’ development. I think that education is the key to creating awareness of the power of counselling to effect change personally and regionally. Mass media must become our ally.