Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Teach­ers and oth­er pro­fes­sion­als who want to give back to so­ci­ety are be­ing asked to pro­vide free tu­tor­ing and men­tor­ship to or­phans and aban­doned chil­dren.The call came from pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer of the Gift for Life Foun­da­tion, Lak­sh­mi Ra­goo­nanan, dur­ing a Moth­er's Day pool par­ty held for the chil­dren at Seav­iew Park­way, Gulf View, yes­ter­day.

Ra­goo­nanan, a com­put­er sci­ence teacher of St An­tho­ny's Col­lege, who is in the process of com­plet­ing her Mas­ters in Ed­u­ca­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, said some chil­dren are not achiev­ing their full aca­d­e­m­ic po­ten­tial.She said there were 53 or­phan­ages in T&T and while all of the homes re­ceived fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance, many chil­dren were grow­ing up with bit­ter­ness be­cause of a lack of aca­d­e­m­ic and emo­tion­al sup­port.

"The chil­dren have a lot of emo­tion­al needs that are not be­ing ful­filled. We recog­nised that in many homes the chil­dren were not do­ing well aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly."They lacked self es­teem and so­cial in­ter­ac­tion skills," Ra­goo­nanan said.

She added, "Care­givers at the homes are not equipped with the aca­d­e­m­ic knowl­edge to help the chil­dren. They don't have any­one to help them with home­work nor do they get the push or mo­ti­va­tion." Ra­goo­nanan said teach­ers from the foun­da­tion who pro­vide free tu­tor­ing have al­ready record­ed suc­cess sto­ries. Last year, a stu­dent from Mar­i­on Home at­tained eight CXC dis­tinc­tions and his dream is to study med­i­cine.

Ra­goo­nanan said the foun­da­tion has al­so been tak­ing chil­dren on ed­u­ca­tion­al trips.A to­tal of 150 chil­dren from nine homes across the coun­try at­tend­ed the pool par­ty.Ra­goo­nanan said the idea to hold the par­ty on Moth­er's Day orig­i­nat­ed be­cause of the pain the or­phans feel around this time.

"We re­alised that the chil­dren feel sad be­cause they want to know why their moms aban­doned them. That is why we have thrown a pool par­ty for them to cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment where they can be ex­treme­ly hap­py and they can lose them­selves in this joy," she said.

Ra­goo­nanan fur­ther added that plans were afoot to set up a tu­to­r­i­al cen­tre for the chil­dren in cen­tral Trinidad. She said once a venue is sourced in south Trinidad as a do­na­tion, an­oth­er tu­to­r­i­al cen­tre could be es­tab­lished in South. She added that the cost of shut­tle ser­vices to take the chil­dren for ed­u­ca­tion­al out­ings was al­so high and vol­un­teers were al­so need­ed to man­age the events and en­sure the safe­ty of the chil­dren.

Any­one want­i­ng to join the Gift For Life Foun­da­tion can con­tact Ra­goo­nanan at 734-0796 or 672-5157. Emails can be sent to the gift­for­life­foun­da­tion2009@hot­mail.com.