SASCHA WIL­SON

The win­dows and doors of the church re­mained opened and no one shook hands or hugged, but 35 chil­dren re­ceived their spec­ta­cles through the Rapid­fire Kidz Foun­da­tion’s Eyes Right Project.

The func­tion was held at the Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian Church at Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day.

With the con­fir­ma­tion of four lo­cal cas­es of COVID-19, sev­er­al pub­lic func­tions have been can­celled and schools and uni­ver­si­ties closed to min­imise the spread of the dis­ease.

How­ev­er, foun­da­tion pres­i­dent Kevin Rati­ram said they felt the event was too im­por­tant to can­cel.

“Many of the par­ents called me to in­quire whether it was still on hav­ing re­gard to the coro­n­avirus threat now loom­ing over Trinidad and To­ba­go. I want to tell you it wasn’t an easy de­ci­sion for us to make to go ahead with his func­tion to­day, but you know what we thought to our­selves 35 chil­dren are card­ed to re­ceive glass­es to­day.”

He said the chil­dren’s ed­u­ca­tion would have suf­fered had they not re­ceived their glass­es.

“So, just as the sit­u­a­tion is some­what of an emer­gency with the coro­n­avirus, so too is your ed­u­ca­tion be­cause every day that goes by where a child is ham­pered from learn­ing is a day longer that child is put at risk and his or her fur­ther is put at risk,” he added.

How­ev­er, Rati­ram said they were tak­ing pre­cau­tions by halt­ing all hug­ging, hand shak­ing, kiss­ing and “de­cent lov­ing up” which usu­al­ly oc­curs at their func­tions.

“To­day, we put a ban on lov­ing up. We not even shak­ing hands…Bounce with el­bows, that’s the greet­ing for to­day,” he said.

The foun­da­tion, a chil­dren’s char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion, has to date dis­trib­uted 818 free eye­glass­es to pri­ma­ry school pupils through­out the coun­try since the in­cep­tion of their project in 2014.

Rati­ram, how­ev­er, said they had a scare when Nu Iron Un­lim­it­ed, which had spon­sored the project from 2018 to 2019, in­formed them that they were pulling their spon­sor­ship.

He said, “My foun­da­tion was dev­as­tat­ed. We feared that we’d have to ter­mi­nate the project for lack of funds. But thank God, Hard Rock Cafe stepped in and saved the day with their spon­sor­ship.”

Hard Rock Cafe paid for the 35 eye spec­ta­cles for pupils of Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian School.

The ma­jor­i­ty of pupils and their par­ents turned up at the func­tion.

Road safe­ty co-or­di­na­tor for the TTPS Sgt Brent Bat­son de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress.