It was the vis­i­ble pover­ty in her home town of Union Vil­lage in Rio Claro that made Lisa Chote and her fam­i­ly start the Cin­derel­la Project.

The 13-year-old NGO's main func­tion is to sup­ply fam­i­lies in need with gen­tly used cloth­ing, shoes and toys around Christ­mas time.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Chote said they col­lect the items and dis­trib­ute them to needy fam­i­lies in var­i­ous rur­al ar­eas such as Biche, Poole Vil­lage, San Pe­dro and Navet. And this year, it plans to ex­pand to the To­co area.

She start­ed the NGO that won the 2006 First Caribbean In­ter­na­tion­al Bank Un­sung Hero award and has helped many fam­i­lies through the kind and gen­er­ous do­na­tions made to the or­gan­i­sa­tion by the pub­lic.

One ex­am­ple of the over­whelm­ing pub­lic gen­eros­i­ty was the 20,000 items the Cin­derel­la Project col­lect­ed in 2004. It was the most they've ever col­lect­ed.

This year how­ev­er, Chote said the con­sis­tent gen­eros­i­ty to which they've be­come ac­cus­tomed seems to have dried up.

The Cin­derel­la Project col­lect­ed items from just 15 peo­ple, when usu­al­ly the tar­get is to col­lect from at least 100.

"Do­na­tions have been very slow this year. This is very un­usu­al. Lots of peo­ple have made promis­es, but the do­na­tions are just not com­ing through. And if it stays this way then we can on­ly reach very few fam­i­lies this year. There are some places we just would not be able to go," said Chote.

She said the dri­ve, which be­gins on Oc­to­ber 1 an­nu­al­ly and ends on De­cem­ber 5, is one those in need look for­ward to ea­ger­ly.

"It is re­al­ly an aw­ful feel­ing not to be able to meet some of those needs this year, should it re­al­ly re­main this way," lament­ed Chote.

She stressed that pover­ty is re­al in T&T and the lev­el of pover­ty is wor­ry­ing.

"Be­lieve it or not, in 2013 there are kids in this coun­try who are still go­ing to school with rub­ber slip­pers. I met one fam­i­ly who lives in a cane field with no run­ning wa­ter. In an oil econ­o­my, this is just un­ac­cept­able," said Chote.

"I find there is a sort of im­mu­ni­ty to need in this coun­try. Peo­ple have be­come so in­un­dat­ed with re­quests for help that they just don't do any­thing," she opined.

She thanked the civ­il and faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions and all friends who have as­sist­ed the NGO over the years, say­ing with­out them the job may not have been done ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.

Chote said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is mak­ing an ap­peal to the pub­lic to step up and help it to car­ry out its role and func­tion each year.

For more in­for­ma­tion on how to as­sist the Cin­derel­la Project e-mail Chote at lisa­chote1@gmail.com.

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