Room for 14 new res­i­dents was cre­at­ed fol­low­ing the re­fur­bish­ment of the Se­nior Cit­i­zens Home on Beck­les Street in Ch­agua­nas as a re­sult of Gen­er­a­tion Di­rectTV's pan-re­gion­al Rock, Pa­per, Scis­sors pro­gramme. The home was found­ed in 1936 to fa­cil­i­tate in­di­vid­u­als 60 years and over who are in need of a place to live. But over the years, in the ab­sence of sus­tained fund­ing, the liv­ing con­di­tions had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed. The com­pa­ny un­der­took the three day re­fur­bish­ment project, which was filmed by an in­de­pen­dent film crew from Chile. In or­der to build aware­ness and in­spire the pub­lic through­out Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean re­gion, the 30 minute pro­gramme was pro­duced for broad­cast to a po­ten­tial of more than three mil­lion homes. It pre­mieres on Di­rectTV's ex­clu­sive chan­nel, 201/999 to­mor­row at 7 pm, and the doc­u­men­tary de­buts on lo­cal CCN TV6 on Sep­tem­ber 19 at 5 pm.

Pri­or to the Gen­er­a­tion Di­rectTV project the home fa­cil­i­tat­ed 11 se­nior cit­i­zens. It can now in­crease it's oc­cu­pan­cy to 25 from a wait­ing list of 70 in­di­vid­u­als. Both emp­ty and oc­cu­pied liv­ing quar­ters were re­fur­bished. This in­clud­ed plas­ter­ing of walls, re­place­ment of doors, ceil­ing re­pairs, seal­ing off bath­room ar­eas and paint­ing. The main kitchen area and gaze­bo were re­paired and paint­ed, di­lap­i­dat­ed fenc­ing was re­placed, and pre­vi­ous­ly open ar­eas were fenced with new chain link wire. The home is cur­rent­ly man­aged by a vol­un­teer com­mit­tee, with Michelle Thomas man­ag­ing the day to day op­er­a­tions. Thomas ex­pressed grat­i­tude on be­half of the com­mit­tee for Di­rectTV's gen­eros­i­ty.

"We have had as­sis­tance be­fore but nev­er like this. It was very touch­ing to see every­one work­ing to­geth­er but most of all the smiles on the se­nior cit­i­zens faces. They in­ter­act­ed with them through­out the days and some even joined in to help work on their rooms. I can­not say thank you enough." Rock Pa­per Scis­sors in­cor­po­rates em­ploy­ee en­gage­ment and vol­un­teer­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty. It is one of many pro­grammes that com­prise Gen­er­a­tion Di­rectTV, which sup­ports ed­u­ca­tion, dis­as­ter re­lief and com­mu­ni­ty out­reach ac­tiv­i­ties. Last year em­ploy­ees con­tributed to the Ac­tion Gen­er­a­tion pro­gramme, which is a hu­man­i­tar­i­an project that pro­vides re­lief to vic­tims of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and of­fers a fol­low up pro­gramme af­ter the dis­as­ter with the ob­jec­tive of restor­ing hope.

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Any­one wish­ing to as­sist or con­tribute to the Se­nior Cit­i­zens Home can con­tact Michelle Thomas at 665-3645, or Can­dice Adams at 672-8111 ex­ten­sion 1401.