In­nis Fran­cis

in­nis_fran­cis@ya­hoo.com

US Marines based at the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain dis­trib­uted toys to 100 mi­grant chil­dren from the La Ro­maine Mi­grants Sup­port Group (LRMSG) yes­ter­day.

The ef­fort was in keep­ing with a US Ma­rine cus­tom of host­ing toy dri­ves for chil­dren at Christ­mas time and they reached out to the LRMSG co­or­di­na­tor Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine, who sup­plied the names of Venezue­lan mi­grant chil­dren at the La Ro­maine RC Church ages one to 12 years old.

John Miller, po­lit­i­cal of­fi­cer at the US Em­bassy ex­plained: “Marines in the US his­tor­i­cal­ly pro­vide toy dri­ves for kids dur­ing the hol­i­day sea­son. Each Em­bassy work­er went out to pur­chase toys based on their age, gen­der and we were able to buy toys for all the kids on the list. We al­so have clothes that have been do­nat­ed.”

He added: “It’s a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion for mi­grants and mi­grant kids es­pe­cial­ly be­cause they don’t have a sup­port struc­ture here, so we thought some of these kids would not have a Christ­mas this year. We fig­ured of all the groups we could tar­get, we de­cid­ed to tar­get the LRMSG.

“When we came, we saw kids that they didn’t have shoes, cloth­ing, and things like that. We fig­ured what bet­ter use of our char­i­ty and our will to pro­vide a Christ­mas for these kids oth­er­wise they would not have this op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Ram­nar­ine said it was a mag­nan­i­mous ges­ture by the Marines as the mi­grant chil­dren would not have or­di­nar­i­ly have re­ceived a present.

She said the LRMSG came in­to be­ing in March 2019 and fo­cused on an ed­u­ca­tion­al thrust for the chil­dren.

“It be­came more than just a class­room, it be­came a whole so­cial work thrust be­cause not on­ly were we help­ing the kids, we were help­ing the par­ents find em­ploy­ment and with as many of their needs as pos­si­ble.”

Ram­nar­ine said many of the chil­dren who were un­able to at­tend will re­ceive Christ­mas gift bags be­fore De­cem­ber 24.