Shal­iza Has­sanali

Nine-year-old Gi­an­na "Lovey" Kan­gall wants to fol­low in the foot­steps of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar by open­ing a fund to help chil­dren who are less for­tu­nate in San­gre Grande. With­in the next two weeks, Kan­gall, a Stan­dard Four pupil of San­gre Grande Hin­du School, will open "Lovey's Heart Fund" which seeks to es­tab­lish a col­lec­tion of funds to pro­vide for chil­dren who are strug­gling to make ends meet. The fund was con­cep­tu­alised by Kan­gall, who is af­fec­tion­ate­ly called Lovey. This fol­lowed an in­ci­dent in­volv­ing one of her class­mates, Anil Per­sad, who was un­able to con­tribute to his school's Christ­mas gift ex­change and par­ty on De­cem­ber 3. Kan­gall, who was touched by Per­sad's mis­for­tune, dipped in­to her pock­et and gave him $4. The big heart­ed girl al­so so­licit­ed an ad­di­tion­al $7 from her class­mates so Per­sad could join in the school's ac­tiv­i­ties.

Kan­gall said Per­sad, of Ka­sodil Cir­cu­lar, lives with his fam­i­ly in ab­ject pover­ty. "Anil has no fur­ni­ture in his house and when the rain falls, his home is flood­ed. I re­al­ly feel sor­ry for him. No child should go through this," she said. Kan­gall said peo­ple should not care and share on­ly for Christ­mas, but year round. "We have to look out for one an­oth­er, es­pe­cial­ly the less for­tu­nate. This is what the Prime Min­is­ter has been ask­ing for, and I think it is on­ly fit­ting that I do my part in mak­ing our coun­try a bet­ter place." San­gre Grande North West Coun­cil­lor Dayne Fran­cois, who heard about Kan­gall's kind­ness, of­fered to as­sist by do­nat­ing $200 every month.

Fran­cois, who is in the process of help­ing Kan­gall open a bank ac­count for the fund, said all monies will be mon­i­tored by a com­mit­tee and dis­pensed to fam­i­lies on a needs ba­sis. "We need to be trans­par­ent and ac­count­able, es­pe­cial­ly when it comes to peo­ple's mon­ey," Fran­cois ex­plained. Fran­cois said the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ex­ec­u­tive of To­co/San­gre Grande has of­fered to match his $200, while his col­league, coun­cil­lor Deb­bie Ann Har­ris has al­so giv­en a com­mit­ment to help fi­nan­cial­ly. With San­gre Grande hav­ing the high­est rate of pover­ty in the coun­try, Fran­cois is urg­ing cit­i­zens to take a page out of Per­sad-Bisses­sar's book by con­tin­u­ing to show com­pas­sion for the un­der­priv­i­leged and down­trod­den.

"We are not on­ly fo­cus­ing on Anil but all the un­der­priv­i­leged chil­dren in San­gre Grande," Fran­cois said.

Fran­cois not­ed that the fund will help chil­dren to ob­tain school books, food, cloth­ing, uni­forms and pri­vate lessons. "I am hop­ing that the oth­er cor­po­ra­tions would do like­wise," Fran­cois said. "Gi­an­na took the ini­tia­tive from the Prime Min­is­ter. The Bible says... 'and a child shall lead the way', and we are see­ing this hap­pen to­day."