As 23 Venezue­lan chil­dren of reg­is­tered mi­grants pre­pare to at­tend school for the first time in years come Sep­tem­ber, 50-plus Venezue­lan chil­dren have al­ready start­ed study­ing at a learn­ing cen­tre, A Ray of Hope, in Pe­nal.

A 40-foot con­tain­er on the grounds of the Pe­nal Catholic church was con­vert­ed in­to a learn­ing cen­tre in May 2024 for just un­der $250,000 by the Chil­dren’s Ark for mi­grant/refugee Venezue­lan chil­dren.

Si­mone De la Bastide said af­ter a meet­ing be­tween Arch­bish­op Charles Ja­son Gor­don, the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty, the Mi­grant Min­istry, and St Do­minic’s RC Pe­nal Parish, it was de­cid­ed that two cen­tres would be es­tab­lished, one in Pe­nal and an­oth­er in San­ta Cruz.

Bilin­gual vol­un­teers from the Ro­man Catholic church as well as the mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty as­sist with the teach­ing.

The Chil­dren’s Ark, lo­cat­ed at 7 Fitzblack­man Dri­ve, Wood­brook, is a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO) geared to­wards im­prov­ing the lives of in­sti­tu­tion­alised chil­dren or any in­di­vid­ual child or body in dire need.

Its ob­jec­tives are to fo­cus on chil­dren from birth to 16 years of age in T&T who are in des­per­ate need, with a view to pos­i­tive lifestyle changes wher­ev­er pos­si­ble.

Oth­er than work­ing with the young mi­grants, the Chil­dren’s Ark has al­so part­nered with the In­ter-Agency Task Force, the Daren Gan­ga Foun­da­tion, and the Each One Teach One school at Beetham to ac­com­mo­date a sports pro­gramme for eight months, fea­tur­ing foot­ball and crick­et, in­volv­ing 200 young res­i­dents.

The NGO is al­so build­ing a home for the founder of the All In One Child De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre and the Each One Teach One school in Beetham, as­sist­ing a sev­en-year-old boy to at­tend a spe­cial needs school, part­ner­ing with LWC and speech ther­a­pist Wendy Gomez.

Fa­ther Robert Chris­to, who re­cent­ly trans­ferred to the Ari­ma/Mal­abar dis­trict, was parish priest when the cen­tre was com­mis­sioned.

“We are do­ing a holis­tic ed­u­ca­tion op­tion and to in­fil­trate them with val­ues and ethics,” he said.

He said they want­ed to play a sig­nif­i­cant role in in­te­grat­ing Venezue­lan chil­dren in­to the sys­tem and teach them Chris­t­ian val­ues.