Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty di­rec­tor Rhon­da Main­got is thank­ing God that the min­istry go­ing de­spite its fi­nan­cial con­straints.

Dur­ing the LWC’s gold­en an­niver­sary gala at the Hilton Trinidad on Sun­day, it was re­vealed that it is owed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2 mil­lion from peo­ple who made pledges but did not ho­n­our them.

This was con­firmed by IRP Fire and Safe­ty Lim­it­ed ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Richard Thomp­son dur­ing the gala.

“Rais­ing funds for any char­i­ty is nev­er easy and re­cent­ly we were even more in a bind with the lack of com­mit­ment of two mil­lion dol­lars in grants,” he said.

Speak­ing to a room filled with his busi­ness coun­ter­parts, Thomp­son said he’s al­ways on a jour­ney to be­come a bet­ter hu­man be­ing, most­ly to com­mu­ni­cate more with God and un­der­stand what is re­quired of him as a busi­ness leader. He ex­plained that was how he found the Liv­ing Wa­ter Com­mu­ni­ty.

Six months ago, he said he fol­lowed his heart and met with LWC di­rec­tor Main­got and that was when he learnt about the min­istry’s fi­nan­cial con­straints.

“We first­ly took on the chal­lenge in ad­dress­ing the com­mu­ni­ty short­fall in rev­enue, which was ev­i­dent,” he said.

The busi­ness­man said to help pull the LWC out of the red, the com­mit­tee de­cid­ed to host a gala and fundrais­er for the 50th an­niver­sary.

And while their con­tri­bu­tions are wel­comed, Main­got said they want­ed to cel­e­brate those busi­ness­es who sup­port­ed the LWC over the years.

“The last 50 years has been an amaz­ing jour­ney...and it has been amaz­ing for many dif­fer­ent rea­sons. One of the main rea­sons is for peo­ple like you here this evening, all of you who have been friends and bene­fac­tors and sup­port­ers of our com­mu­ni­ty in one way or an­oth­er in all of these years, I just want to thank you,” she said with grat­i­tude.

The LWC is a Catholic Ec­cle­sial Com­mu­ni­ty that be­gan in Port-of-Spain in 1975. It dis­trib­utes ba­sic care, nour­ish­ment and self-de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes for the vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety.

How­ev­er, even with their fi­nan­cial con­straints, Main­got said God has nev­er for­sak­en the LWC.

“Al­ways when we set out to help the poor, he sends what we need and he touch­es hearts like all of you here, your heart is touched to help the poor,” she said.