Carisa Lee

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre, Jan Sir­jus­ingh, has urged young peo­ple to choose pos­i­tive paths, point­ing to the ex­am­ple set by stu­dent char­i­ty founder Liam Chan Pak dur­ing an out­reach and Car­ni­val cheer event at the cen­tre on Fri­day.

Sir­jus­ingh said young peo­ple should not un­der­es­ti­mate their abil­i­ty to make a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence. “You’re nev­er too young to do some­thing ex­cel­lent, and ex­cel­lence has no bound­aries,” she said.

She added that while the cen­tre re­ceives gov­ern­ment sup­port, do­na­tions re­main crit­i­cal to meet­ing the needs of chil­dren with phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties. Sir­jus­ingh said the chil­dren re­quire more than ba­sic care. “De­spite gov­ern­ment sup­port, we still de­pend on do­na­tions be­cause our chil­dren need more than just sur­vival; they need the op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow,” she said.

Sir­jus­ingh de­scribed Chan Pak’s in­volve­ment as es­pe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful, ex­plain­ing that he con­tact­ed the cen­tre on his own ini­tia­tive. “And of course this was a big treat for me, be­cause when I usu­al­ly have to call every­body and beg, this day I got a call from the school, young Liam,” she said.

Chan Pak re­cent­ly launched his own char­i­ty, Lift­ing Lives, af­ter be­com­ing in­volved in ear­li­er char­i­ty work and de­cid­ing he want­ed to do more. He lat­er reached out to the Princess Eliz­a­beth Cen­tre to of­fer sup­port.

Speak­ing at the event, Chan Pak ex­plained the mo­ti­va­tion be­hind his or­gan­i­sa­tion. “Every day, some­one we know is fight­ing a bat­tle that we can­not see… Lift­ing Lives was cre­at­ed to sup­port those in need by do­nat­ing es­sen­tial goods and spread­ing hope,” he said.

Sir­jus­ingh said she was im­pressed not on­ly by Chan Pak’s out­reach but al­so by his fol­low-through. “It’s amaz­ing that a young man at his age could think of lift­ing lives and lift­ing oth­ers to rise stronger,” she said.

As part of the ini­tia­tive, Lift­ing Lives do­nat­ed pal­lets of dry goods, meat sup­plies, per­son­al care items, cloth­ing and goody bags for the chil­dren. The or­gan­i­sa­tion al­so spon­sored Car­ni­val cos­tumes and sup­port­ed the Car­ni­val cheer ac­tiv­i­ties held at the cen­tre on Ari­api­ta Av­enue, Port of Spain.

Fol­low­ing the out­reach seg­ment of the pro­gramme, chil­dren at the cen­tre took part in Car­ni­val cheer cel­e­bra­tions along­side stu­dents from Es­he’s Learn­ing Cen­tre and St Crispin’s AC Pri­ma­ry School.