Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly is work­ing to as­sist over 100 chil­dren, some as young as eight years old, who are strand­ed in Lon­don.

Guardian Me­dia was told that Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is in dis­cus­sion with his team to reach out and pro­vide the need­ed as­sis­tance.

It was re­port­ed on Thurs­day that Jar­ic Ti­tans Sports De­vel­op­ment Club pub­licly called for help re­gard­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for the team. The coach, Bri­an Browne, made a video ap­peal for as­sis­tance, ex­plain­ing that they had al­ready booked flights with­out se­cur­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion.

The team ar­rived on Wednes­day morn­ing and is ex­pect­ed to re­turn on April 5.

He ex­plained that af­ter ar­riv­ing in Eng­land for the Man­ches­ter In­ter­na­tion­al East­er Foot­ball Cup the team ran in­to chal­lenges.

He said they are now strug­gling to find ac­com­mo­da­tion for near­ly 100 chil­dren and 50 adults due to plans falling through at the last minute but still de­cid­ed to “take a leap of faith” and trav­el since the tick­ets had al­ready been booked.

A Go­FundMe page has been set up to raise £60,000 for shel­ter, and the pub­lic is al­so asked to make do­na­tions to the club's Re­pub­lic Bank ac­count. Up to last night the page man­aged to raise £4,580.

He claimed that at­tempts to seek fund­ing from the Sports Min­is­ter and the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) were un­suc­cess­ful, and the club had ap­plied late for fund­ing through the Sport and Cul­ture Fund.

The Min­is­ter, Sham­fa Cud­joe, con­firmed that no ap­pli­ca­tion was made from the team for fund­ing for the trip.

Ef­forts are un­der­way to find sup­port from the Trinidad and To­ba­go High Com­mis­sion in Eng­land.