March 17, 1970- Barbara Andrea Arrindell was born to Margaret ‘Peggy’ Arrindell in Old Runaway, in her grandparents’ bedroom. Yes, she still resides where ‘she navel string bury’.
Barbara Arrindell is a graduate of the University of the West Indies and holds an MBA (Human Resource Management) and an Executive Diploma (Management). She also attended the Christ the King High School where she began extending her hands to assisting others.
Barbara has taught at all levels of the education system, spending the longest time at The Antigua & Barbuda International Institute of Technology (ABIIT), where she taught Marketing & Human Resource Management. She was best known for her public speaking classes which required students to go into the community and share their talent and knowledge. In more recent times she has channelled her energy into Customer Service training and workshops in Communication, Team Building and other topics that raise the standard of productivity in the workplace in Antigua & Barbuda.
She is a playwright and writer with stories published in regional and international journals and published articles in every major local newspaper from the 1990’s to present. Her writings have served to educate and to stimulate behavioural change. Her body of writing includes a Youth Watch column in the, now defunct, Antigua Sun Newspaper; and two published children’s books, “Antigua My Antigua” (a colouring book) and “The Legend of Bat’s Cave”. One of her stories also appears in a Canadian published anthology edited by Dr. Althea Prince “So The Nailhead Bend, So The Story End”.
Barbara has volunteered in many spheres of life across our community to include the Child and Family Guidance Centre, the Independence Literary Arts Committee, the Museum of Antigua and Barbuda and the Wadadli Youth Pen Challenge. She is the founder and still active leader of the Anglican Youth Group, Listen to Me and the Cushion Club (1995/6) which is a reading club for children. She chaired the 2017 Wadadli Stories Literary Book Fair committee; and also served as a charter member of the Toastmasters Club.
Her most recent project is an initiative called Trees 2020 Inc., an initiative which aims to be part of the solution where the issue of trees is concerned. The objective is to “green up” Antigua and Barbuda in 2020. Barbara has been a member of the Optimist Club of St. John’s for over 25 years and is one of only two nationals of Antigua and Barbuda to have held the position of Caribbean District Governor of Optimist International. She is also an awardee of the inaugural Women of Wadadli Award in the field of Community Change Maker.
For fun, Barbara does historic research and unearths somewhat forgotten Antiguan & Barbudan historic figures and stories.
She currently manages and is a shareholder of The Best of Books Bookshop and remains passionate about youth development, in particular promoting reading and creative writing.
‘Hundreds of young people have been positively impacted by her willingness to give of time and energy in big and small ways’