Teach­ers at Ex­change RC School in Cou­va have launched a school uni­form dri­ve to as­sist fam­i­lies bur­dened by the high and ris­ing cost of school sup­plies and those un­em­ployed and al­ready strug­gling with the cost of liv­ing.

Par­ents and stu­dents can do­nate and re­ceive gen­tly-used school uni­forms, some­times footwear and oth­er ar­ti­cles of cloth­ing free of charge.

With the cost of liv­ing sky­rock­et­ing, the rise in fu­el, taxi fares and food prices, the war in Ukraine, and COVID-19 af­fect­ing and dis­rupt­ing sup­ply chains and ship­ments, the uni­form dri­ve and dis­tri­b­u­tion is a boon, es­pe­cial­ly for par­ents who are un­em­ployed, get­ting less hours of work or those with sev­er­al chil­dren at­tend­ing school.

S Seer­at­tan, from Cou­va, is un­em­ployed and a moth­er of three—her el­dest child wrote SEA last year and she has two chil­dren at­tend­ing Ex­change RC School, in Stan­dards Two and Three.

Seer­at­tan said “The school’s uni­form dri­ve is ben­e­fi­cial to me be­cause I didn’t have fi­nance at all to pur­chase them. I am grate­ful to be able to kit them out, the uni­forms are in very good con­di­tion. Be­sides uni­forms, I got some socks and vests for them.

“More schools should take up this plan. I’m re­al­ly thank­ful to the school, the teach­ers and the prin­ci­pal (Christo­pher Mar­quis) for this plan.

“It would help many par­ents like my­self who are out of work if they can’t af­ford to send their chil­dren to school.”

A wid­ow from Cou­va who is un­em­ployed and has three chil­dren—the youngest is in Stan­dard Four at Ex­change RC School, the sec­ond at­tends Cou­va West Sec­ondary, and the el­dest son is in his 20s—de­scribed the uni­form dri­ve as a very good ini­tia­tive.

The woman said “It’s a good idea, I com­mend Mrs Lee for the con­cept. Just for one term, two months of va­ca­tion, most chil­dren put on weight and grow taller dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

“They’re go­ing to spend mon­ey to buy a set of uni­forms to go to school for the next two months and may have to buy them over again. Every lit­tle bit helps in these hard times.

“This is not some­thing I start­ed now. Since they were grow­ing up, I prac­tised hand-me-down; pass­ing down clothes the chil­dren out­grew to some­one younger or less for­tu­nate than us.”

She re­vealed that some par­ents who might be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges may not come out and ask for uni­forms, but the school uni­form dri­ve pro­vid­ed them with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to shop’ for much-need­ed uni­forms free.

The woman said that she was prac­tis­ing fru­gal liv­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ism be­fore the school uni­form dri­ve.

She elab­o­rat­ed that at pre-school, par­ents are asked to bring an ex­tra change of clothes for their chil­dren in case of an ac­ci­dent, in ad­di­tion to the pre-school hav­ing spare clothes.

She shared that when her chil­dren fin­ished pre-school, she took all the uni­forms they out­grew and washed, ironed and fold­ed them neat­ly and dropped them off at the school as she knew many par­ents were less for­tu­nate and need­ed a help­ing hand.

This was al­so not the first time she had do­nat­ed uni­forms to the Ex­change RC School’s prin­ci­pal.

The woman said if she felt that some clothes had lit­tle im­per­fec­tions that weren’t suit­able to do­nate, how­ev­er, she would pack them for the garbage man along with toys, shoes and oth­er items for some­one who can reuse them.

‘Short school term, many par­ents with­out sus­tain­able in­come’

Sun­day Guardian spoke to Ex­change RC School Ag vice-pres­i­dent Natasha Lee who came up with the ini­tia­tive.

Lee said “The Fri­day be­fore school closed, we were hav­ing a fam­i­ly lime home by my dad. We were just talk­ing, my broth­er, sis­ters, sis­ter-in-law, my hus­band, we’re all teach­ers, even my par­ents are re­tired teach­ers...We were just talk­ing about school re­open­ing in the third term and stu­dents hav­ing to buy uni­forms to wear for just a few weeks when school would close again.

“We know for two months they would re­al­ly have their growth spurt and hav­ing to buy uni­forms again for Sep­tem­ber would be re­al­ly dif­fi­cult.”

She said they were brain­storm­ing and de­cid­ed that it would be a good idea to have a uni­form dri­ve and let par­ents who had uni­forms that were too small for their chil­dren do­nate to those who could use them.

Lee rea­soned that the stu­dents would have their uni­forms for just a cou­ple of months and not have to use them for the rest of the year. She said that many of the chil­dren’s uni­forms were pris­tine since 2020 and fol­low­ing the COVID-19 school lock­downs af­ter. Lee sug­gest­ed that they can be giv­en to chil­dren that they could fit.

The Stan­dard Five stu­dents who wrote SEA and tran­si­tioned to sec­ondary school could do­nate their uni­forms to the Stan­dard Four stu­dents.

She said when the teach­ers went to sign off the reg­is­ter in the last week of school, sev­er­al col­leagues were talk­ing about the uni­form dri­ve be­ing a good plan. The school al­ready had some uni­forms in cup­boards from pre­vi­ous do­na­tions they could clean and dis­trib­ute, and prin­ci­pal Christo­pher Mar­quis grant­ed them per­mis­sion to do so.

Lee said April 6 was col­lec­tion day at the school where par­ents do­nat­ed uni­forms. She brought them home and laun­dered, steamed and sani­tised them. The fol­low­ing week she car­ried them back to the school for dis­tri­b­u­tion.

She said this was a short term with many par­ents still with­out sus­tain­able in­come so she was try­ing to ease their pock­ets at least un­til Sep­tem­ber.

Naa­dia Joseph-Urquhart, a Stan­dard One teacher at Ex­change RC School said there were a few par­ents who were con­cerned about avail­abil­i­ty and fi­nances per­tain­ing to ac­cess­ing uni­forms and they were ap­pre­cia­tive of Lee’s ini­tia­tive en­abling them to shop’ for uni­forms that were to­tal­ly free.

She said in­for­ma­tion on the dri­ve was post­ed on so­cial me­dia, in­clud­ing What­sApp and Zoom ses­sions.

Joseph-Urquhart said there was a won­der­ful re­sponse from par­ents ask­ing how they can con­tribute and do­nate uni­forms, shirts, over­alls and pants of var­i­ous sizes.

She said girls’ over­alls were priced in stores at be­tween $120 and $150, shirts at $35 and $40, boys’ pants at $50 and shirts at $34 and $40. The school gave two over­alls and three shirts to each child free and three pants and three shirts to each boy.

Joseph-Urquhart added that in all they gave out about 80 over­alls, 75 pants and 100 shirts and still have about 20 pants left in case oth­ers were still in need.

She said some par­ents al­so do­nat­ed sneak­ers, socks and oth­er items, which was a kind ges­ture and the teach­ers, par­ents and pupils ap­pre­ci­at­ed it.

Joseph-Urquhart said at a staff meet­ing they com­ment­ed that it was a com­mend­able ini­tia­tive and they were look­ing for more ben­e­fi­cial ideas from Lee to be im­ple­ment­ed.