In­nis Fran­cis

in­nis_fran­cis@ya­hoo.com

A La Ro­maine fam­i­ly of sev­en has been over­whelmed by an out­pour­ing of love af­ter their emo­tion­al plight was fea­tured in last Sun­day’s Guardian news­pa­per.

Five sib­lings in the fam­i­ly were forced to miss SEA, CXC and CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions as pover­ty, ex­ac­er­bat­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, made it dif­fi­cult for their par­ents to even af­ford food for them dai­ly.

Shawn Doul, his wife Marisa Al­i­john, and their five chil­dren, who live along the South Trunk Road, La Ro­maine, have been ex­press­ing “thank yous” to sev­er­al peo­ple who dropped off food, clothes, build­ing ma­te­r­i­al and de­vices at their home over the last few days.

Doul told Guardian Me­dia that the lev­el of sup­port his fam­i­ly re­ceived had con­sumed him.

Les Ef­forts West/La Ro­maine coun­cil­lor Rishi Bal­ram­s­ingh lob­bied and se­cured items val­ued at $10,000 for the fam­i­ly, in­clu­sive of three iPad de­vices. He al­so got fund­ing for on­line tu­tor­ing for the chil­dren in the sum of $600 per child.

Councilor Rishi Balramsingh delivers items to the Doul family, yesterday.

INNIS FRANCIS

Bal­ram­s­ingh de­liv­ered a wa­ter tank and con­crete ply for pri­ma­ry re­pairs to the fam­i­ly’s hum­ble home.

Con­trac­tor Dean Cur­tis Lim­it­ed al­so de­liv­ered cloth­ing and sleep­ing items to the fam­i­ly and al­so gave Doul a job. Cur­tis or­gan­ised with Doul to work with his com­pa­ny as a labour­er on pro­ba­tion, to as­sist with his fam­i­ly needs. He said he be­lieved the way to help a man is to “teach him to fish.”

An­oth­er cit­i­zen from San­gre Grande dropped off cloth­ing, books and cash. A woman, who emailed af­ter read­ing the sto­ry on­line, pledged an undis­closed amount of cash to the fam­i­ly.

Doul was grate­ful for all the as­sis­tance but he still has a hur­dle to cross.

“We are get­ting help but we can­not build any per­ma­nent struc­ture here. This is state land even if we get ma­te­r­i­al. I just wish we could get a piece of land to build a home. And right now, I think that is what we need more than ever, and the chil­dren to get back in school. A man promised me a job, so I just want to work and make my fam­i­ly hap­py.”

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox said: “An of­fi­cer is tak­ing a ham­per to them and they were con­tact­ed by a so­cial work­er. The fa­ther is go­ing in­to the of­fice and more than like­ly they will get a tem­po­rary food card. We will be re­fer­ring the case to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty. A re­fer­ral will al­so be sent to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, as the chil­dren are not in school and HDC will be writ­ten to with re­gards to hous­ing for the fam­i­ly. Our Fam­i­ly Ser­vices is fol­low­ing up on the fam­i­ly to pro­vide much-need­ed as­sis­tance.”

Councilor Rishi Balramsingh, left, presents a water tank to Shawn Doul right that was donated to the family. 

INNIS FRANCIS

De­spite their cir­cum­stances, Doul do­nat­ed some of the ham­pers they re­ceived to a cou­ple of neigh­bour­ing squat­ters. He said he un­der­stands the “strug­gle” and was hap­py to as­sist oth­ers by shar­ing.

Shawn Doul and his wife Marisa Alijohn receive iPad devices from Les Efforts West/La Romaine councilor Rishi Balramsingh., yesterday.

INNIS FRANCIS