RHON­DOR DOWLAT

Child rights am­bas­sador Gabriel Hamp­ton is com­mit­ted to rais­ing $600,000 for two chil­dren di­ag­nosed with can­cer to get treat­ment in In­dia.

The 11-year-old pupil of the Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian School, San Fer­nan­do, launched his I Can Cam­paign about two years ago and is now em­bark­ing on a project for Je­hue Thomas, eight, and An­to­nio Paci­fique, 15, who are both in need of bone mar­row trans­plants.

The trip and med­ical ex­pens­es are ex­pect­ed to cost $1.3 mil­lion. Gabriel’s goal is to raise $600,000 which will be shared be­tween Thomas and Paci­fique.

He ex­plained that his cam­paign is aimed at help­ing chil­dren to know their rights and to help them suc­ceed. At present, how­ev­er, the fo­cus is on help­ing peo­ple with can­cer.

“I want­ed to make sure that chil­dren that have can­cer...I want them to feel no pain of hav­ing it,” he said.

This Sat­ur­day the first of two ma­jor fundrais­ing events is tak­ing place at the Na­pari­ma Boys’ Col­lege. It will be a health fair, fea­tur­ing lo­cal ven­dors and games for chil­dren. The sec­ond fundrais­er will be a con­cert in April.

“Two boys will ben­e­fit from this first leg of fundrais­ing. There were three but one of them sad­ly passed away last week but the two boys are Je­hue Thomas and An­to­nio Paci­fique. They need med­i­cine in In­dia, so we are try­ing to make the mon­ey to fly to In­dia so they can get their bone mar­row trans­plants be­cause they have leukaemia,” Gabriel said.

“This mo­ti­vates me be­cause I want those chil­dren to ac­tu­al­ly get the med­i­cine. If I were any of those two chil­dren I wouldn’t want that pain and I would want some­one to help me,” he added

Gabriel urged oth­er chil­dren to be like him in bring­ing pos­i­tiv­i­ty to so­ci­ety.

“You don’t need an age to make a dif­fer­ence. You can make a dif­fer­ence from any age such as if you are three, you can still make a dif­fer­ence by help­ing some­one in dan­ger,” he said.

“You can al­so help by be­ing pos­i­tive to them and giv­ing them pos­i­tive state­ments every time they are suf­fer­ing.”

For more in­for­ma­tion on Gabriel and his fundrais­ing cam­paigns vis­it his Face­book page, Gabriel Hamp­ton.