Ot­ton Car­ring­ton

The Dis­trict Grand Lodge of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Eng­lish Con­sti­tu­tion yes­ter­day do­nat­ed tablet de­vices to the St James/Care­nage Po­lice Youth Club.

Since the on­set of COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, many stu­dents have been un­able to at­tend vir­tu­al school class­es be­cause they do have ac­cess to on­line de­vices.

The Dis­trict Grand Lodge start­ed the process of the dis­tri­b­u­tion 30 tablets with a do­na­tion of the first three yes­ter­day.

“We are quite hap­py and proud to be able to as­sist St James Youth Club with this pre­sen­ta­tion of three tablets for the en­hance­ment of the learn­ing process for the younger mem­bers of the club,” Dis­trict Grand Al­moner David Lums­den said.

“Over the last four years the Dis­trict Grand Lodge of Trinidad and To­ba­go in char­i­ties has do­nat­ed close to over 400 thou­sand and this ef­fort this af­ter­noon is just an­oth­er one of our ef­forts to en­sure that we serve our com­mu­ni­ties and try to save as of our youth by help­ing out with these de­vices.”

Founder/Man­ag­er of St James/Care­nage Po­lice Youth Club Der­rick Shar­bod­ie was hap­py with the do­na­tion.

“There is a say­ing that the fu­ture lies in the book bag, well I am see­ing now that the fu­ture now lies in the lap­top, tablet and oth­er de­vices, it is on­ly be­cause we are dis­rupt­ed by this un­for­tu­nate dis­ease but this dis­rup­tion can be both neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive, and we are on­ly grate­ful that homes are now trans­formed to class­rooms where par­ents can su­per­vise and as­sist com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing and play­ing a fun­da­men­tal role.”

He said the youth club has 184 young peo­ple and ap­pealed to the wider pub­lic to come for­ward and as­sist to en­sure the chil­dren are not left be­hind.

St James/Care­nage Po­lice Youth Club PRO Pas­tor Clive Dot­tin added, “We deal with pre­ven­tion, we deal with re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, we deal with both. We deal with en­dan­gered youth and youth who are al­ready in dan­ger and we deal with young peo­ple who are on the brink of be­ing en­dan­gered, we have young peo­ple in this club who may not have had a fu­ture be­cause of this club.”

Youth club mem­ber Em­manuel Ho­sein said some chil­dren have been re­al­ly strug­gling as some of their par­ents have been laid off from jobs since the pan­dem­ic hit.

“It is re­al­ly good to know that there are peo­ple out there that are will­ing to sup­port us and do­nate these kind things to us. It can re­al­ly aid in help­ing many of us ac­cess our ed­u­ca­tion in this time,” Ho­sein said.