The di­rec­tor of the Rain­bow Res­cue, a home for boys, Judy Wil­son, says if elec­tri­cal work and plumb­ing are com­plet­ed on time, the or­gan­i­sa­tion will be in its new home by May.Wil­son said the home's new Mar­aval build­ing, which had been un­der con­struc­tion for over a year, would be fin­ished with­in the next two months once spon­sors kept their promis­es to as­sist. She said the elec­tri­cal work, which had al­ready be­gun, had been do­nat­ed by the T&TEC Mt Hope Sports Club.

"Imag­ine, we get wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty bills but we have nei­ther of those things," she said.Wil­son said the home had re­ceived sup­port from com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als but some peo­ple had made promis­es they did not keep. These emp­ty promis­es, she said, were mak­ing an al­ready dif­fi­cult job even hard­er.She added: "Even so, I feel blessed. I am so thank­ful for all the sup­port giv­en to the home so far."

Wil­son re­ceived a lease for the Sad­dle Road, Mar­aval, prop­er­ty in Oc­to­ber 2011 af­ter Rain­bow Res­cue out­grew the home's cur­rent Bel­mont lo­ca­tion. Wil­son, who had viewed the di­lap­i­dat­ed struc­ture in Mar­aval as a bless­ing, had a shock when, a month lat­er, flood­ing in Mar­aval rav­aged the prop­er­ty, de­stroy­ing the right wall com­plete­ly and par­tial­ly de­stroy­ing the wall on the left side.

She had just ar­rived on the prop­er­ty af­ter buy­ing bags of ce­ment for labour­ers to com­plete the plas­ter­ing work to the out­side wall when she met a T&T Guardian team yes­ter­day."The build­ing turned out to be way more work than we ex­pect­ed," she said.Wil­son said the build­ing's sig­na­ture red out­side walls, which were made of a type of riv­er stone, had to be sup­port­ed by plas­ter as pieces of it would fall off with a sin­gle touch.

The pre­vi­ous­ly aban­doned prop­er­ty, sit­u­at­ed at 2 Sad­dle Road, Mar­aval, had suf­fered from van­dal­ism and most of the elec­tri­cal wiring had been pulled out and pil­fered. A new roof was put in and the floors changed com­plete­ly. The in­side has been trans­formed in­to a dor­mi­to­ry for the boys, aged eight to 19, a down­stairs kitchen, of­fices, store­rooms, a care­tak­er's room, bath­rooms and clos­ets. The new build­ing will house 16 boys.

Wil­son vis­its the site every day to check on the progress of work.

She said: "It took a mir­a­cle from the Lord to get it from the bro­ken shell it was to a stur­dy struc­ture. A lot of the ma­te­r­i­al was do­nat­ed to us and we got fi­nan­cial do­na­tions, a lot of which went to labour costs."

She said the home still need­ed help in the form of paint for the out­side of the build­ing, kitchen cup­boards, ceil­ing fans, air-con­di­tion­ing units, clos­ets and flood­gates.