Melis­sa Doughty

In 2002, Save Our Chil­dren Foun­da­tion com­mit­ted it­self to fight­ing for and de­vel­op­ing the chil­dren of T&T, es­pe­cial­ly dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren and those af­fect­ed by HIV/Aids. Ten years lat­er, founder and pres­i­dent Les­ley-Ann Nel­son, a com­mu­ni­ty ed­u­ca­tor, ac­tivist, mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and phil­an­thropist says she re­mains ful­ly com­mit­ted to her call. At the top of her pri­or­i­ty list is en­sur­ing the holis­tic de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren through var­i­ous av­enues, lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly. Al­though she has had set­backs rais­ing funds to do the work she be­lieves she has been called to do, Nel­son said she did not al­low this to de­ter her. "I could have con­tin­ued as a very suc­cess­ful busi­ness­woman but when you are called to do God's work, you can­not ig­nore that call. God called me to be of ser­vice to the poor and needy," she firm­ly stat­ed. For her, help­ing means em­pow­er­ing chil­dren with the tools to be­come pro­duc­tive and mean­ing­ful cit­i­zens of T&T. She has sev­er­al tools to help her achieve her goal such as the KIDS (Knowl­edge, In­tel­li­gence, De­ter­mi­na­tion and Suc­cess) Chess Acad­e­my which is an ini­tia­tive of the foun­da­tion and which has been one of her most suc­cess­ful tools.

It be­gan with seek­ing the best ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties for her nephew, Ron­nie Nel­son. "I was tak­ing him to pan class and walk­ing by Ari­ma Boys' RC when I saw the ac­tiv­i­ty of the chess class. I asked them to let my nephew join. He was on­ly four years old at the time. With ma­te­r­i­al in hand, my sis­ter taught him the game and in two weeks he com­pet­ed and won sec­ond place," she re­count­ed. Nel­son said she be­gan to learn the game as well while Ron­nie com­pet­ed world­wide. In learn­ing the game she re­alised its ben­e­fits in sharp­en­ing the in­tel­lect and fos­ter­ing crit­i­cal think­ing. "In play­ing chess you have to think not on­ly for your­self but for your op­po­nent as well. There is a lot of think­ing in­volved in the game of chess," she stat­ed. The KIDS Chess Acad­e­my to­day has a mem­ber­ship of over 100 chil­dren. A chess pro­gramme has been im­ple­ment­ed in schools such as Mu­cu­rapo Girls' RC, Sa­cred Heart Girls' and Tu­na­puna Girls' RC School.

The acad­e­my has en­joyed tremen­dous suc­cess with Ron­nie Nel­son win­ning gold at the Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean (CAC) games in 2008 in Guatemala. He is al­so a two-time Trinidad and To­ba­go Na­tion­al Un­der-10 win­ner. Nel­son said she hopes the acad­e­my's win­ning streak would con­tin­ue at the Chess Olympiad in Pe­ru, The Com­mon­wealth Games in Turkey and oth­er com­pe­ti­tions in El Sal­vador and Guatemala this year. She hopes as well to work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er stake­hold­ers to in­te­grate chess as a com­pul­so­ry pro­gramme in schools through­out T&T. While Nel­son en­joys the suc­cess KIDS Chess Acad­e­my has achieved, there is a dream that re­mains close to her heart. That dream, greater than the ac­qui­si­tion of gold medals and fame, is the dream of pro­vid­ing a home for the chil­dren she loves so dear­ly. "We al­ready have the land. We want to build a home for the chil­dren where each child will have a space of their own. "Hav­ing worked as a man­ag­er at var­i­ous homes I re­alised that the chil­dren had no sense of bound­aries; they did not have a pri­vate space where they were able to feel se­cure. This man­i­fest­ed it­self in them be­ing un­able to have healthy re­la­tion­ships," she ex­plained. The home, she said, would pro­vide the chil­dren with se­cu­ri­ty and com­fort.

"We want to have a home giv­ing each child their own room. It is not go­ing to be run by a care­giv­er just look­ing for a job. We are go­ing to get a sur­ro­gate moth­er and fa­ther to be there for the chil­dren 24/7," she said with a pro­pi­tious smile. Her pas­sion has caught the at­ten­tion of an in­valu­able stake­hold­er, MP Prakash Ra­mad­har, who has promised to as­sist the foun­da­tion and the acad­e­my with air­line tick­ets for in­ter­na­tion­al trav­el. While the foun­da­tion con­tin­ues to grow and de­vel­op, the fi­nan­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of its up­keep falls large­ly on the shoul­ders of Nel­son. She said sev­er­al fund-rais­ing ac­tiv­i­ties had been held but it seemed to al­ways fall short of rais­ing the de­sired funds need­ed to un­der­take the large ven­ture. Nel­son said she hoped this year's ac­tiv­i­ty would be vast­ly dif­fer­ent. The foun­da­tion is set to host a Dis­ney-like char­i­ty event aimed at rais­ing funds for the foun­da­tion it­self as well as to off­set ex­pens­es in­curred by the chess acad­e­my. The event will be held on March 30, at the Tu­na­puna Boys' RC com­pound. Tick­ets will be priced at $10 for chil­dren and $20 for adults. "My vi­sion for Save Our Chil­dren Foun­da­tion is to have a healthy home for chil­dren who are or­phaned and to have homes through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go," she said, look­ing hope­ful­ly out in­to the dis­tance.