Melis­sa Doughty

"Love un­til the Lord does some­thing. Love un­til we see change. Love un­til our com­mu­ni­ty is re­stored." The Love­un­til Foun­da­tion firm­ly be­lieves that love con­quers all. That's why its mem­bers are fer­vent­ly com­mit­ted to the de­vel­op­ment of Laven­tille and by ex­ten­sion T&T through con­tin­u­ous and per­sis­tent love. David Alexan­der, Isaac­son Byng and chair­man Bri­an Jones found­ed the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO) sev­en years ago. To­day the or­gan­i­sa­tion can be cred­it­ed with hav­ing as­sist­ed more than 5,000 stu­dents through its school-based pro­gramme. Si­mone Jones, the or­gan­i­sa­tion's gen­er­al manger of sup­port ser­vices, said, "It is an NGO cre­at­ed out of a need for giv­ing back to the com­mu­ni­ty of Laven­tille. I grew up in Laven­tille and did well for my­self. It was a beau­ti­ful place to grow up and it still is."

A labour of love and faith

The pho­net­ic pun (Love-un-til) on the com­mu­ni­ty's name tells ex­act­ly what the foun­da­tion means to its founders and Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin-a labour of love and faith. "Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin is very close to the group. He was out there work­ing in the field with gang mem­bers, etc. He had a vi­sion to pro­vide re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion for peo­ple af­fect­ed by crime," Jones re­called. Dot­tin's com­mit­ment, cou­pled with the de­sire of Alexan­der, Byng and Jones, led to the ac­qui­si­tion of land on which the foun­da­tion now stands. The build­ing was ded­i­cat­ed on Au­gust 28, 2005 and was soon fol­lowed by rapid com­mu­ni­ty work. "We start­ed a small bak­ery. We opened and start­ed dis­trib­ut­ing bread free of charge. Some places we de­liv­ered and sold the bread to raise some funds. But most of the bread was giv­en away. We would sell to the banks and oth­er cor­po­rate spaces where we knew peo­ple. "We did this for al­most two years, un­til it be­came too much. We could not sup­ply de­mand, so the bak­ery closed about a year ago," she said.

Sev­er­al dif­fer­ent needs

But very much like love, the foun­da­tion took the dis­ap­point­ment and churned some­thing pos­i­tive from it. The foun­da­tion al­lowed the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment to use the space free as a cen­tre for its bread, cakes and pas­tries course, which, Jones added, was very well at­tend­ed. It is still be­ing used as a cen­tre where cours­es on bal­loon artistry and cater­ing and hos­pi­tal­i­ty are taught. The foun­da­tion, she said, was al­so in­ter­est­ed in vo­ca­tion­al train­ing and so sought groups with whom it could part­ner. "We got in­volved with the Na­tion­al Aids Co-or­di­nat­ing Com­mit­tee (NACC). We part­nered with them to re­cruit a num­ber of peo­ple (a group of 25 in 2005, un­der the age of 25) to be­gin men­tor­ship and that is how our school-based pro­gramme be­gan. We did work­shops and re­alised that there was a whole lot of need for so many dif­fer­ent things," she said. "We saw a need for life skills which were lack­ing be­cause of the break­down in fam­i­lies. There was a need for cop­ing skills, con­flict res­o­lu­tion, and al­though the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem evolved to some ex­tent to pro­vide this there was still a need for NGOs to sup­port it," she said.

The pow­er to make a dif­fer­ence

In the col­lab­o­ra­tive na­ture of love, Love­un­til part­nered with Re­pub­lic Bank through its Pow­er to Make a Dif­fer­ence Pro­gramme and be­gan go­ing to pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools where they felt "the stu­dents may not or­di­nar­i­ly have ac­cess to such op­por­tu­ni­ties and where we need­ed to catch them ear­ly" and be­gan men­tor­ing and teach­ing life skills to the stu­dents. The foun­da­tion cur­rent­ly runs the pro­gramme in 11 schools: Laven­tille Girls, Suc­cess RC, Port-of-Spain SDA, Bel­mont Sec­ondary, Mal­ick Sec­ondary, South East Port-of-Spain, Beetham Pri­ma­ry, St Phillips Pri­ma­ry, Mu­cu­rapo East and West and Bish­op's Cen­te­nary. Love­un­til has opened a va­ri­ety of de­vel­op­men­tal op­por­tu­ni­ties for the stu­dents, in­clud­ing de­bate com­pe­ti­tions, pre-school cours­es, OJT pro­grammes and coun­selling. It re­cent­ly host­ed a three-day work­shop for girls, with talks by pub­lic fe­male fig­ures such as for­mer PSA pres­i­dent Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus. The or­gan­i­sa­tion plans to host an­oth­er three-day work­shop in June, when the girls will be tak­en to a re­sort and taught dra­ma and nu­mer­ous life skills. Jones is adamant that the love ex­tend­ed to the stu­dents by the foun­da­tion could not have been pos­si­ble with­out the spon­sor­ship it re­ceived. And like love, she said, the foun­da­tion would con­tin­ue to be en­dure. "We plant seeds and we will see the re­wards. We fight for these stu­dents and we will con­tin­ue to fight for the com­mu­ni­ty."