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Monday, July 7, 2025

How to effectively use our community centres

by

1812 days ago
20200721

I have not­ed with in­ter­est the many com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres be­ing opened or ren­o­vat­ed by gov­ern­ment. I could not help but re­mem­ber when, in my late teenage and ear­ly 20s, the Mt Hope/ Mt Lam­bert Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre was my stomp­ing ground. I re­call re­hears­ing there for Best Vil­lage Tro­phy Com­pe­ti­tion, at­tend­ing cours­es there and par­tic­i­pat­ing in pro­grammes of the An­gel­ic Youth Group.

I was an ac­tive mem­ber of the Catholic Youth Or­gan­i­sa­tion, but was in­vit­ed to join the An­gli­can Youth Group as well.

Re­cent­ly, I at­tend­ed the 90th birth­day cel­e­bra­tions of re­tired Clerk of Ap­peals, Al­ston David Romeo, and was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised at the trans­for­ma­tion of that com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre.

Many years ago, I was for­tu­nate to par­tic­i­pate in a Unit­ed States In­ter­na­tion­al Vis­i­tors Lead­er­ship Pro­gramme. One of the pro­grammes I ob­served was the Build­ing Blocks pro­gramme in the State of Ken­tucky. It in­volved old­er women in the com­mu­ni­ty as­sist­ing young moth­ers by pass­ing on to them child rear­ing skills and ac­tu­al­ly car­ing for the ba­bies and young chil­dren of those young moth­ers, to al­low the moth­ers to have some time free from child-rear­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

It is well-doc­u­ment­ed that un­re­lieved stress of car­ing for ba­bies, tod­dlers and young chil­dren can some­times cause moth­ers to abuse their chil­dren. A child­care fa­cil­i­ty which can, pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly, re­lieve moth­ers from that stress would cause a de­crease in child abuse.

A few years ago, a young boy was left in the care of an old­er sib­ling, as his fa­ther had to go to work and could not af­ford day-care. The young boy was washed away in a canal dur­ing heavy rain­fall and drowned. I re­mind­ed the gov­ern­ment then, of its oblig­a­tion un­der Ar­ti­cle 18 of the Con­ven­tion on the Rights of the Child “to ren­der ap­pro­pri­ate as­sis­tance to par­ents and le­gal guardians in the per­for­mance of their child-rear­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and en­sure the de­vel­op­ment of in­sti­tu­tions, fa­cil­i­ties and ser­vices for the care of chil­dren.”

One much-need­ed fa­cil­i­ty is a child­care fa­cil­i­ty for ba­bies and young chil­dren.

Some com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres come alive with ac­tiv­i­ties in the af­ter­noon and late evenings and re­main un­oc­cu­pied dur­ing the day. A sec­tion of these cen­tres can be out­fit­ted as day-care cen­tres to pro­vide for those chil­dren whose moth­ers or sin­gle fa­thers can­not pay for child­care, which can be very ex­pen­sive.

Child­care can be an hourly care to al­low par­ents to run er­rands, part-time, to al­low for cer­tain ac­tiv­i­ties, such as at­ten­dance at cours­es, or may be full-time care for moth­ers or fa­thers who work.

In our ag­ing pop­u­la­tion, there are many re­tired per­sons who wish to keep ac­tive and may be will­ing to make a use­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the so­ci­ety in that way. Al­though many would be will­ing to do such ser­vice on a vol­un­tary ba­sis, the gov­ern­ment can ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pay­ment of a stipend to en­cour­age those who live in the vil­lage to raise a child.

Home-work cen­tres can al­so be housed in the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres for chil­dren who are hav­ing ar­eas of dif­fi­cul­ty at pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary lev­els. Old­er chil­dren, who have ex­celled in cer­tain sub­jects, can al­so be en­cour­aged to give an hour a week to as­sist their peers.

Study groups can al­so be in­sti­tut­ed, so stu­dents can learn co­op­er­a­tion and live the mot­to: “We are in this to­geth­er.”

Let’s make our com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres be­come cen­tres for com­mu­ni­ty build­ing, not on­ly among the mid­dle-aged or sport­ing com­mu­ni­ty but for the so­cial and ed­u­ca­tion­al de­vel­op­ment of all.

Child rights ad­vo­cate


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