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Thursday, February 20, 2025

COVID-19 recovery facility for children established

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1155 days ago
20211223
Stakeholders at Ray of Hope Handover Ceremony (L-R) – Dr. Carol Logie, Chairman, Children's Authority of Trinidad and Tobago; Dr. Brian Armour, SWRHA CEO; Stuart Young MP, Minister of Energy and Energy Industries and Minister in the Officer of the Prime Minister; Dr. Maryam Abdool-Richards, Principal Medical Officer (Ag.); Michael Quamina, Chairman, Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Ltd.; Arlene Chow, Heritage Petroleum CEO; and Lawrence Arjoon, Heroes Foundation CEO.  (Image courtesy Division of Gender and Child Affairs, Office of the Prime Minister)

Stakeholders at Ray of Hope Handover Ceremony (L-R) – Dr. Carol Logie, Chairman, Children's Authority of Trinidad and Tobago; Dr. Brian Armour, SWRHA CEO; Stuart Young MP, Minister of Energy and Energy Industries and Minister in the Officer of the Prime Minister; Dr. Maryam Abdool-Richards, Principal Medical Officer (Ag.); Michael Quamina, Chairman, Trinidad Petroleum Holdings Ltd.; Arlene Chow, Heritage Petroleum CEO; and Lawrence Arjoon, Heroes Foundation CEO. (Image courtesy Division of Gender and Child Affairs, Office of the Prime Minister)

A COVID-19 re­cov­ery fa­cil­i­ty for chil­dren in the care of the State has been es­tab­lished.  “Ray of Hope” is a ded­i­cat­ed iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ty—the first of its kind—in the Par­al­lel Health Care Sys­tem (PHCS), to man­age the spe­cial needs of COVID-19 pos­i­tive chil­dren un­der the care of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty in Com­mu­ni­ty Res­i­dences. 

A re­lease from the Di­vi­sion of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs ex­plains Ray of Hope rep­re­sents the col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts of sev­er­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing four Min­istries, four State En­ter­pris­es, 34 cor­po­rate and in­di­vid­ual donors, and four Non-Gov­ern­men­tal Or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs).

The fa­cil­i­ty will be man­aged by the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) and was pro­vid­ed by Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd. and the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries. 

Min­is­ter with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, Alana Web­ster-Roy MP, says the project was ex­e­cut­ed in one month, with co­or­di­na­tion and vol­un­teer sup­port from the He­roes Foun­da­tion to set up a child-friend­ly space and es­tab­lish a learn­ing cen­tre that will en­able chil­dren to ac­cess on­line school­ing and dig­i­tal de­vel­op­ment ac­tiv­i­ties dur­ing their re­cov­ery pe­ri­od. 

“Ray of Hope speaks to the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to en­sure that chil­dren in the care of the state re­ceive the crit­i­cal med­ical sup­port and ser­vices need­ed as we con­tin­ue to bat­tle this pan­dem­ic,” Min­is­ter Web­ster-Roy stat­ed in the re­lease. 

“We are mo­ti­vat­ed by the dri­ve and pas­sion of youth at the He­roes Foun­da­tion to be ac­tive cit­i­zens and vol­un­teer their time and tal­ent to de­liv­er a project that will ben­e­fit their peers in our coun­try.  This fa­cil­i­ty, the col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing de­liv­ery, and the care to be pro­vid­ed by the SWRHA is a tes­ta­ment to our mis­sion to work col­lec­tive­ly to pro­mote and en­sure the pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ment and well-be­ing, best in­ter­ests, and em­pow­er­ment of all chil­dren,” the Min­is­ter added.

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer (Ag), Dr. Maryam Ab­dool-Richards, is Project Co­or­di­na­tor for Ray of Hope.

“In the midst of a dev­as­tat­ing glob­al health and eco­nom­ic cri­sis set against the back­drop of widen­ing so­cial in­equity, an ‘all-hands-on-deck ap­proach’ is im­per­a­tive.  Ray of Hope ex­em­pli­fies a suc­cess­ful mod­el for pub­lic-pri­vate sec­tor col­lab­o­ra­tion with the sup­port of NGOs to ad­dress a so­ci­etal chal­lenge with­in a time of volatil­i­ty, un­cer­tain­ty, am­bi­gu­i­ty, and risk ex­ac­er­bat­ed by di­min­ish­ing re­sources,” Dr Ab­dool-Richards said.

She added: “The col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­forts and con­tri­bu­tions of over $450,000 in ma­te­ri­als and items bears pow­er­ful tes­ti­mo­ny to what can be done when unit­ed by pur­pose.  We con­tin­ue to work to­wards achiev­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals 3 – Good Health and Well-Be­ing, and 10 – Re­duced In­equal­i­ties.”

He­roes Foun­da­tion Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Lawrence Ar­joon, not­ed the im­por­tance of the project to pro­tect the na­tion’s chil­dren.

“Vol­un­teerism and ac­tive cit­i­zen­ship are a core part of all our pro­grammes, and our lo­cal and mi­grant pro­gramme par­tic­i­pants were hap­py to help cre­ate a safe, pos­i­tive, and en­gag­ing space for chil­dren.  They were able to learn about project man­age­ment and tan­gi­bly de­liv­er a project that is crit­i­cal to the na­tion­al in­ter­est. Chil­dren con­tin­ue to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed by the pan­dem­ic, and what we do to­day to en­sure the care, pro­tec­tion, and de­vel­op­ment of chil­dren in Trinidad and To­ba­go will af­fect the fu­ture of our coun­try.  From an idea sparked in No­vem­ber to a Christ­mas mir­a­cle in De­cem­ber, Ray of Hope is a tes­ta­ment to ‘To­geth­er We As­pire, To­geth­er We Achieve’, “he stat­ed.

The Di­vi­sion of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs and the He­roes Foun­da­tion re­ceived sup­port from and col­lab­o­rat­ed with the fol­low­ing part­ners for the Ray of Hope project:

Ad­vance Foam Lim­it­ed 

Safetec

An­gos­tu­ra Lim­it­ed

Sign­way Lim­it­ed

Art for Us

South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty

Artemis En­er­gy Ltd

South­ern Med­ical Clin­ic

Bhag­wans­ingh’s Hard­ware Lim­it­ed

South­ern Sales and Ser­vices Lim­it­ed

Con­struc­tion Ser­vices and Sup­plies Lim­it­ed

Stan­dard Dis­trib­u­tors

Dr. Car­la Noel-Mendez

Tang Yuk Light­ing

Foun­da­tion for the En­hance­ment and En­rich­ment of Life (F.E.E.L.)

Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel

GESS­CO Group of Com­pa­nies

Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go

HAD­CO

The Hor­ti­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed

The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries

Hori­zon’s Art Gallery

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries

Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel

The Min­istry of Health

In­dus­tri­al Re­sources Lim­it­ed

The Of­fice Au­thor­i­ty

In­terchem Lim­it­ed

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter

John Singh Con­trac­tors

The Shel­ter

Kall­co

Tradewinds Ho­tel

Kapok Ho­tel

Tran­scend Lim­it­ed

Ken­son Group  

Trent Restau­rants Group

La Mer Day Spa

TSTT

Lt. Cm­dr. Loren­zo Char­iandy

Uni­com­er Ltd

Mrs. Jacque­line Quam­i­na

Watts Elec­tri­cal 

Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed

Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go

Puff n’ Stuff Bak­ery

Raf­mon Mar­ket­ing Lim­it­ed 

 

COVID-19HealthChildren's Homeschildren


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