Chil­dren with spe­cial needs in South and Cen­tral Trinidad now have eas­i­er ac­cess to ther­a­py ser­vices as a new fa­cil­i­ty opens in the area.

The Caribbean Kids and Fam­i­lies Ther­a­py Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CK­FTO) of­fi­cial­ly opened its sec­ond cen­tre yes­ter­day at Ram­saran Street, Ch­agua­nas.

Vice Chair­man of the board and co-founder of the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Sofia Figueroa-Leon said it was a big step.

"I am feel­ing over­whelmed with emo­tion and hap­pi­ness. We have a sec­ond home in Ch­agua­nas where we will be serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty," she said.  

She added that the cen­tral bor­ough wel­comed them with open arms and the team is ex­cit­ed to start work­ing with the first group of chil­dren next week. 

"Ch­agua­nas chose us," she stat­ed. 

Figueroa-Leon said the own­ers of Price Club Su­per­mar­ket gave them the build­ing and ren­o­vat­ed it for ap­prox­i­mate­ly half a mil­lion dol­lars.

The Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion al­so do­nat­ed $60,000 and Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed wel­comed the NGO to the bor­ough. 

"I nev­er had the dif­fi­cul­ty of deal­ing with spe­cial needs kids or adults but they ba­si­cal­ly give up their lives for their chil­dren. With­out NGOs like this, the vul­ner­a­ble in our so­ci­ety would have been liv­ing in a dog-eats-dog world, that is what we would have liv­ing in but you en­sure that they have an in­clu­sive life," Mo­hammed said.