The Ro­man Catholic Church in T&T is no longer pre­pared to wait on the Gov­ern­ment and is set­ting up its own schools to specif­i­cal­ly ac­com­mo­date the chil­dren of Venezue­lan refugees.

While the ex­act num­bers are not known the church es­ti­mates that there are hun­dreds of Venezue­lan chil­dren who are in the coun­try and are not al­lowed to go to pub­lic schools be­cause they are not cit­i­zens of T&T.

Guardian Me­dia has learnt that the schools will be set up through­out the coun­try, at var­i­ous prop­er­ties be­long­ing to the church, and the chil­dren will not have to go through the nor­mal process in­volved in get­ting in­to pub­lic schools.

The ef­fort is be­ing spear­head­ed by the Min­istry for Mi­grants and Refugees of the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty, an arm of the Catholic Church, and has the bless­ings of sev­er­al oth­er stake­hold­ers.

Co­or­di­na­tor of the Church’s Min­istry of Mi­grants, Rochelle Nakhid, told Guardian Me­dia that the schools will be safe spaces for chil­dren in what she calls tem­po­ral learn­ing cen­tres.

She posit­ed that “good prac­tice dic­tates that refugees should be in­te­grat­ed in­to the pub­lic school sys­tem and this is an ef­fort to pro­vide ed­u­ca­tion in the in­ter­im us­ing an ed­u­ca­tion in emer­gen­cies ap­proach.”

It is ex­pect­ed that the stu­dents will re­ceive what is called a blend­ed ed­u­ca­tion to al­low them to learn Eng­lish and oth­er sub­jects while tran­si­tion­ing seam­less­ly in­to the lo­cal sys­tem.

The move comes af­ter Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don has for more than a year now, been call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to reg­u­larise Venezue­lan mi­grants. At his homi­ly on Ash Wednes­day, Gor­don in­sist­ed that it was unchris­t­ian like not to help those flee­ing the chaos in the Bo­li­var­i­an Re­pub­lic.

The Arch­bish­op re­cent­ly said in an in­ter­view, “While we must do what is right to meet the needs of our own cit­i­zens, we must al­so show com­pas­sion and hos­pi­tal­i­ty and en­sure that refugees in need of pro­tec­tion and sup­port are treat­ed ac­cord­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.”

He added, “Refugees have been wel­come through­out the whole of his­to­ry. We can­not be the first peo­ple to de­cide that we do not want to wel­come them.”

In re­sponse, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Lovell Fran­cis said a to­tal Gov­ern­ment ap­proach was need­ed to the refugee cri­sis and that is what the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young is do­ing.

He point­ed to the move by Gov­ern­ment to reg­is­ter and al­low Venezue­lans to stay in Trinidad and To­ba­go for up to a year and to work. Fran­cis said it was an at­tempt to bring or­der to the process and that pro­vid­ing ed­u­ca­tion for the chil­dren of refugees is on the cards.

Fran­cis said a large part of the pop­u­la­tion are peo­ple whose par­ents or grand­par­ents mi­grat­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go from oth­er Caribbean is­lands and there­fore his­tor­i­cal­ly, peo­ple have sought and got­ten refuge in Trinidad and To­ba­go, but this time around it’s Venezue­lans who are seek­ing the pro­tec­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He in­sist­ed that this coun­try will do what it has to for the chil­dren of refugees and it will be done in keep­ing with the in­ter­na­tion­al agree­ments gov­ern­ing chil­dren of mi­grants.

By the end of March, the Catholic Church will be­gin ac­cept­ing stu­dents and work is al­ready be­ing done to ac­com­mo­date them. They will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed free of charge with the church pick­ing up the bill.