Raphael John-Lall

The hol­i­day sea­son was made a bit brighter when the Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox vis­it­ed a Diego Mar­tin fam­i­ly of four to dis­trib­ute ham­pers and toys as part of her usu­al yule­tide du­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease from her Min­istry, this fol­lows the dis­tri­b­u­tion of a to­tal of 4,100 Christ­mas food sup­port cards to vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies via the var­i­ous Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment to en­sure that vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies who are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing hard­ship and are un­able to ful­ly pro­vide for the nu­tri­tion­al needs of their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies are pro­vid­ed with the nec­es­sary sup­port.

Min­is­ter Cox not­ed that the ini­tia­tive, which has con­tin­ued from last year, is in­tend­ed to sup­ple­ment fam­i­lies’ food re­quire­ments for the Christ­mas sea­son, as the Min­istry con­tin­ues to ful­fil its man­date of help­ing, em­pow­er­ing and trans­form­ing lives.

Moth­er of three, Christi­na Amoroso re­ceived the items af­ter she was rec­om­mend­ed through the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO), Is There Not A Cause (ITNAC).

She told Cox that she was grate­ful for the toys and the ham­per and for shar­ing her Christ­mas day hol­i­day with their fam­i­ly.

Cox fur­ther thanked ITNAC for iden­ti­fy­ing Amoroso, not­ing that Civ­il So­ci­ety Or­gan­i­sa­tions play a key role in the Min­istry’s re­sponse to as­sist­ing vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens in T&T.

Min­is­ter Cox al­so cred­it­ed the count­less donors from around the coun­try who de­spite the lin­ger­ing ef­fects of COVID-19, con­tributed to­wards the ini­tia­tive to as­sist the less for­tu­nate.

Al­so in at­ten­dance was ITNAC founder Avonelle Hec­tor-Joseph, who in­di­cat­ed that she was pleased to join Cox yes­ter­day to bring com­fort to the fam­i­ly.

She agreed with Cox on the im­por­tance of col­lab­o­ra­tion, stat­ing that an in­ten­tion­al three-point ap­proach among the Gov­ern­ment, Pri­vate Sec­tor and Civ­il So­ci­ety Or­gan­i­sa­tions is in­deed nec­es­sary.

The press re­lease al­so stat­ed that in clos­ing, Cox ex­tend­ed Christ­mas greet­ings to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and en­cour­aged per­sons to in­spire each oth­er to keep the rea­son for the sea­son alive. 

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices is pleased to be able to pro­vide this sup­port to those most in need as it con­tin­ues to meet its man­date of help­ing, em­pow­er­ing, and trans­form­ing lives.