Pe­ter Do­minic Christo­pher

In the up­com­ing school term, the La Sei­va Com­mu­ni­ty coun­cil is urg­ing par­ents to con­tin­ue to sup­port the La Sei­va home­work cen­tre.

The cen­tre was found­ed in 2005 by Bartholomew and Shirley Selvon, with the aid of the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme to pro­vide sup­port to at-risk school chil­dren of the Mara­cas Val­ley.

The UNDP fund­ed the cen­tre un­til 2007 but since then the com­mu­ni­ty has been sole­ly in charge of op­er­a­tions, which they man­aged main­ly through vol­un­teered as­sis­tance and an an­nu­al Car­ni­val cool­er fete.

Bartholomew Selvon died in Oc­to­ber last year, but his fam­i­ly have pushed on with the school, as they knew it was one of his pas­sions.

How­ev­er, they ad­mit it has been a strug­gle even get­ting reg­u­lar at­ten­dance.

“We usu­al­ly have 12 to 15 chil­dren but some­times it’s sev­en, six,” said Shirley Selvon.

She said it was al­so dif­fi­cult to get vol­un­teers as sev­er­al par­ents in the ar­eas were con­sumed by their jobs.

“We know a lot of them work two jobs but if we could get peo­ple to just give a lit­tle time that would be nice,” said Selvon.

She ex­plained that the school al­so need­ed some up­grades to its ameni­ties such as re­strooms and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties; but she said, the cen­tre con­tin­ued to prove its re­silience.

“We strug­gle to stay up, but we are still around,” said Selvon who ex­plained that the school helped stu­dents with top­ics even their par­ents didn’t ful­ly get the grasp of at home.”