Cherisse Moe

Qushi­ba La Fleur be­lieves each child de­serves a chance to be­come some­thing great-even those liv­ing in ar­eas con­sid­ered "high risk" com­mu­ni­ties. Born in Mor­vant and raised in La Hor­quet­ta, La Fleur said she knew all too well the chal­lenges that many of the na­tion's chil­dren face on a dai­ly ba­sis. Through her foun­da­tion, Mas­ters In Nur­tur­ing En­ter­tain­ers (MINE) Pro­mo­tions, La Fleur- the founder, CEO and pres­i­dent - is do­ing her part to make a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence. The three-year-old non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion com­plet­ed its 13-week youth pi­lot pro­gramme, ti­tled, Sup­port Ed­u­cate and En­cour­age De­vel­op­ment (SEED) on Au­gust 13, at the La Hor­quet­ta North and South Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry Schools. Ac­cord­ing to La Fleur, the re­sponse has been "re­al­ly re­al­ly good!"

Life skills

La Fleur stat­ed that the project, which catered to stu­dents be­tween the ages of six and 14, in­tro­duced the young­sters to dif­fer­ent as­pects of en­ter­tain­ment, in­clud­ing dance, the steel­pan, drums, arts and craft, ball­room danc­ing and dra­ma, as well as per­son­al de­vel­op­ment and life skills train­ing. "I saw the need for de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes in these ar­eas. The ma­jor­i­ty of stu­dents had nev­er learned in­stru­ments be­fore and some of them were play­ing the pan at the end of it," she told the T&T Guardian. La Fleur added that some of the stu­dents had even ex­pressed in­ter­est in tak­ing their new found crafts to a high­er lev­el. "En­ter­tain­ment is a big thing for all chil­dren so that's why we went that route. We re­al­ly would like to have it as a con­tin­u­ous thing and even­tu­al­ly vis­it all the schools in the east...If I could help in some small way to change the lives of one or two chil­dren, then it's all worth it."

Per­son­al de­vel­op­ment

Stat­ing that the pro­gramme had al­ready made a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact in the lives of the stu­dents, La Fleur said plans are to take the project to the Tu­na­puna-based Good Shep­erd An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School in Sep­tem­ber. She added, "I have al­so got­ten re­al­ly good feed­back from par­ents. "The Par­ent Teacher Unit of the of the La Hor­quet­ta South Pri­ma­ry School con­tact­ed me to host a per­son­al de­vel­op­ment work­shop for its par­ents. Some of them even cried at the grad­u­a­tion be­cause it was the first time that a pro­gramme of its kind was held in the area." The moth­er of two al­so not­ed that she was ap­peal­ing to the gov­ern­ment to as­sist her in get­ting the youth pro­gramme-which she said cost over $20,000 to stage-in even more schools in the fu­ture.

"I got a small amount of as­sis­tance from the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism as well as Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for the area, Jairam Seemu­n­gal, but the ma­jor­i­ty of the mon­ey came out of the pock­et of the or­gan­i­sa­tion," she dis­closed. Such a pro­gramme, La Fleur stat­ed, was es­sen­tial in build­ing the self-es­teem of stu­dents who may not be giv­en a fair chance to re­alise their full po­ten­tial. "I grew up in a high risk area my­self so I was know what it's like. I grew up see­ing chil­dren hav­ing low self-es­teem and mak­ing bad choic­es. I saw par­ents who did not give their chil­dren the moral sup­port that they need­ed. I want to show them an­oth­er way." The MIND pro­gramme start­ed off with 19 chil­dren; 27 stu­dents grad­u­at­ed at the end.