A beau­ti­ful pic­ture of a con­tent­ed, in­no­cent child with the re­as­sur­ing cap­tion "Each of us mat­ters to God" are some of the im­ages im­pact­ing on chil­dren of the Hope Cen­tre as they walk along the cor­ri­dor in­to the liv­ing room. A warm home­ly at­mos­phere greets them as they re­turn home from school.

For this is home to them, a fam­i­ly of broth­ers and sis­ters, their care­givers and the su­per­vi­sor. Warm cur­tains, lace table­cloth, a satin fin­ished var­nished wood­en floor, a bowl of fruits on the kitchen ta­ble, all con­tribute to that sense of warm wel­come to these boys and girls from ages four to 11.

Chil­dren's laun­dry of vary­ing sizes hang on lines, a parked van in the dri­ve­way, a field area with a pavil­ion, swings and play­ing equip­ment, fluffy ted­dy bears and a healthy ar­ray of fun read­ing books, de­pict a sense of ac­tiv­i­ty, of play­ful­ness and of a healthy lifestyle. This fam­i­ly of the Hope Cen­tre in San Fer­nan­do is the fam­i­ly of the com­mu­ni­ty.

The his­to­ry

So how did it all be­gin? The first child en­tered this Hope Cen­tre on April 30, 1992. But this is not re­al­ly where it be­gan. It was the ma­te­ri­al­i­sa­tion of the vi­sion of some mem­bers of the Sorop­ti­mist and Ro­taract Clubs of San Fer­nan­do back in 1986, who es­tab­lished a call-in coun­selling sta­tion for drug users and af­fect­ed fam­i­lies.

Hope Cen­tre was the name giv­en. When the need for this di­min­ished, a greater need was recog­nised-that for a chil­dren's home in the South. With the group ex­pand­ing, the search for a suit­able build­ing be­gan and even­tu­al­ly the Car­val­ho build­ing on Pointe-a-Pierre Road, di­lap­i­dat­ed and van­dalised, was made avail­able.

A trans­for­ma­tion be­gan and un­der the ded­i­cat­ed and ca­pa­ble lead­er­ship of Mrs An­gela Watkins to­geth­er with a group of com­mit­ted ladies the project start­ed. It was a mon­u­men­tal task with hard work, per­se­ver­ance, much fund-rais­ing and the gen­eros­i­ty of the com­mu­ni­ty, their vi­sion came to fruition. Hope Cen­tre, the chil­dren's home opened its doors on April 30, 1992, and the first child was ad­mit­ted. Its mis­sion is to pro­vide a tem­po­rary home for chil­dren in need of an en­vi­ron­ment that would pro­vide love, heal­ing and hap­pi­ness to the lives of these chil­dren, who in some in­stances had suf­fered some loss or even had a trau­mat­ic event.

A phys­i­cal ac­com­mo­da­tion with that sus­tained promise is the Hope Cen­tre of San Fer­nan­do. For 20 years al­most 300 of our na­tion's chil­dren have lived hap­pi­ly here, many hav­ing moved on to con­tribute to so­ci­ety. To­day it may well be as­sessed as one of the na­tion's most ef­fi­cient­ly run homes.

Ed­u­ca­tion

In a holis­tic phi­los­o­phy of child de­vel­op­ment, ed­u­ca­tion is seen as piv­otal. Com­ing as they do from vary­ing ge­o­graph­i­cal, so­cial and psy­cho­log­i­cal spaces, school­ing al­lows for a broad­en­ing of learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ences that lead to self em­pow­er­ment. They all at­tend school. To­day there are 14 chil­dren.

To cater for all their cur­ricu­lum needs and learn­ing abil­i­ties, re­sources are ac­cessed such as coun­selling, re­me­di­al read­ing, spe­cial in­struc­tion, ex­tra lessons, in-house home work su­per­vi­sion and a read­er friend­ly li­brary. Com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy of the day al­so con­tributes to the learn­ing pro­fi­cien­cy of these chil­dren.

In a rec­i­p­ro­cal func­tion­ing of the Cen­tre, oth­er in­sti­tu­tions avail them­selves of this home to ful­fill their own agen­da. The courts may send, as part of their pro­ba­tion­ary sys­tem, young­sters to per­form com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as a cor­rec­tive mea­sure.

Sec­ondary schools too, in the com­mu­ni­ty, grav­i­tate to this in­sti­tu­tion, recog­nised for its pro­fes­sion­al record keep­ing and trans­par­ent in­fra­struc­ture, to ful­fill their stu­dents co-cur­ric­u­lar manda­to­ry com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice.

Of­ten these stu­dents would over­see the home­work and re­vi­sion pe­ri­ods of the girls and boys at the Cen­tre. Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents too, of­ten choose the Hope Cen­tre to ful­fill the re­quire­ments of their practicums in their study of so­cial work and psy­chol­o­gy. This healthy in­ter­ac­tion is in­deed ben­e­fi­cial to all those who en­gage in this shar­ing process.

A home

"What makes it a home?" we may well ask. Meals, beds, fur­ni­ture, cook­ing, din­ing and laun­dry fa­cil­i­ties, play­ing field, toys, books, com­put­ers and now so­lar en­er­gy all make a com­plete phys­i­cal pack­age. Each child has his or her own space and per­son­al para­pher­na­lia even as each one shares in the com­mon ar­eas and shares all the fa­cil­i­ties of the Hope Cen­tre fam­i­ly.

Lov­ing su­per­vi­sion, dai­ly man­age­ment, a dis­ci­plined car­ing rou­tine, vis­i­tors' fre­quent pres­ence all con­tin­ue to ad­min­is­ter to the gen­er­al tone and to the ef­fi­cien­cy of the home. School days, church as­sem­blies, birth­day par­ties, sum­mer camps, com­pet­i­tive sports, games, all con­tribute to a healthy so­cial in­ter­ac­tion with­in the fam­i­ly mem­bers them­selves and with the com­mu­ni­ty. One child ex­celled in the school foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion as the best shoot­er and was giv­en a trip to To­ba­go where she al­so won the com­pe­ti­tion. An­oth­er child was giv­en a trip to Dis­ney World last year and six pri­ma­ry school girls who were on their school's foot­ball team went with the team to To­ba­go.

Sev­er­al kind and gen­er­ous sup­port­ers pro­vide these com­ple­men­tary ser­vices. Qual­i­fied peo­ple in the fields of med­i­cine, psy­chol­o­gy, law, ed­u­ca­tion, den­tistry and re­li­gion con­tin­ue to serve this in­sti­tu­tion. Sev­er­al food donors in their gen­er­ous sup­plies even al­low this cen­tre at times to share with oth­er homes and car­ing cen­tres. There is an amaz­ing fun­da­men­tal sense of giv­ing and re­ceiv­ing. The chil­dren them­selves are hap­py re­cip­i­ents of all this so­cial in­ter­ac­tion.

Of­ten they are in­vit­ed to birth­day and Christ­mas par­ties, and oth­er so­cial events. Some­times they par­tic­i­pate in sum­mer camps or group out­ings. The phi­los­o­phy is al­ways to re­store a sense of nor­mal­cy and a healthy re­turn to life and to liv­ing. The care­givers and man­ag­er are the in-house cor­ner­stone of the Hope Cen­tre. Four of them, two at each shift man­age the in­sti­tu­tion on a dai­ly ba­sis. They pro­vide meals, send the chil­dren off to school, su­per­vise the home­work, in­still val­ues, in­cul­cate good, pos­i­tive think­ing, set­tle quar­rels and gen­er­al­ly at­tend to their needs. They them­selves stand out in their care­giv­ing as they are al­so trained in this field.

They learn man­age­ment skills and learn how to iden­ti­fy abuse or anger as psy­cho­log­i­cal ex­pres­sions of the child. They too grow as they serve. As a char­i­ta­ble non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion the man­ag­er main­tains a pro­fi­cient record sys­tem so that each child has his or her own jour­nal­is­tic life record. Le­gal doc­u­ments too ac­com­pa­ny these files. Some­times, it be­comes nec­es­sary for the su­per­vi­sor to pro­cure doc­u­ments such as birth cer­tifi­cates and would be sub­ject to the rigours of the var­i­ous agen­cies and their de­mands.

The chil­dren them­selves de­vel­op many skills. On week­ends they learn through be­ing in­volved in house­hold chores. Some may as­sist in the kitchen, oth­ers may give a bath to a ba­by sis­ter in the home. A few may learn skills in the busi­ness places such as car­ing for chil­dren, sewing or nail care as in­vest­ments in their ca­pac­i­ty to earn a liv­ing in the fu­ture. Many who have left the in­sti­tu­tion re­turn home to vis­it the oth­ers there, thus con­tin­u­ing the sup­port base.

This non-de­nom­i­na­tion­al home re­mains a land­mark on the hills of San Fer­nan­do. Nes­tled against the hills, this Hope Cen­tre of­fers a refuge for our chil­dren who have been hurt or had to be away from home for a while. This in­sti­tu­tion of­fers hope and is a sanc­tu­ary for them. Its sus­tain­abil­i­ty has been pri­mar­i­ly through the car­ing com­mu­ni­ty. The Gov­ern­ment makes a year­ly very lim­it­ed fi­nan­cial con­tri­bu­tion. Donors and vol­un­teers pro­vide hope and their com­pas­sion­ate ges­ture is well ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

Many have giv­en their ser­vices pro­fes­sion­al­ly and tan­gi­bly. Their re­sources of time and ex­per­tise con­tin­ue to cater to the needs of those among us who are the most vul­ner­a­ble of our na­tion's hu­man re­source. The chair­man, Mrs Pol­ly In­dar sees her board mem­bers, the su­per­vi­sor, the care­givers and the com­mu­ni­ty as in­stru­ments of this thrust: "If ye have done it un­to the least of these, ye have done it un­to me."

Hu­man­i­tar­i­an ser­vice can nev­er tru­ly be mea­sured in quan­ti­ties or in time span. Man's kind­ness to fel­low man flows from the in­nate qual­i­ty to tran­scend his own lim­it­ed hu­man qual­i­ty and to as­cend to an­gel­ic heights. And there are many who amidst the throng of crowd­ed mad­ness, find it with­in them­selves to give care and to give love. To­day, then, we join with the Cen­tre in cel­e­brat­ing 20 years of ser­vice. May they con­tin­ue to meet the chal­lenges and to tran­scend them and to con­tin­ue to serve with pas­sion and hu­mil­i­ty.