A new man­age­ment com­mit­tee has been ap­point­ed for the St. Jude’s School for Girls for two years. This comes fol­low­ing re­ports of abuse at sev­er­al chil­dren's homes in the coun­try. The new com­mit­tee mem­bers who were se­lect­ed from pub­lic, pri­vate and civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions re­ceived their let­ters of ap­point­ment to­day. 
The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment: 

A new Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee has been ap­point­ed for the St. Jude’s School for Girls for a two-year pe­ri­od (2022-2024). The mem­bers, most of whom were se­lect­ed from pub­lic, pri­vate and Civ­il So­ci­ety Or­gan­i­sa­tions, re­ceived their in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the in­au­gur­al com­mit­tee meet­ing on June 9, 2022.

Mr. Vi­jay Gan­gaper­sad, Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary, Gen­der and Child Af­fairs, wel­comed new and re­turn­ing mem­bers as he fa­cil­i­tat­ed the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment. He thanked the out­go­ing Com­mit­tee for their work in safe­guard­ing the na­tion’s chil­dren.

Mr. Gan­gaper­sad called on the new Com­mit­tee to fo­cus on the pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of mat­ters, the de­vel­op­ment of a work plan and ear­ly plan­ning to max­i­mize on the pe­ri­od of their ap­point­ment. In urg­ing the Com­mit­tee to seek part­ner­ship with new stake­hold­ers, he high­light­ed that the work can­not be done sin­gle­hand­ed­ly.

He al­so en­cour­aged mem­bers to be in­no­v­a­tive, col­lab­o­rate and seek coun­sel in each oth­er’s ideas, while striv­ing to im­ple­ment best prac­tices for the St Jude’s School for Girls. Up­on her ap­point­ment, the new­ly in­stalled Chair­per­son, Ms. Mar­sha Bai­ley, wel­comed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to serve the na­tion’s chil­dren and to work pas­sion­ate­ly to ful­fil the Com­mit­tee’s man­date.

The Di­vi­sion of Gen­der and Child Af­fairs ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pates the col­lab­o­ra­tion among all ap­point­ed mem­bers as we work to­geth­er to im­prove the child pro­tec­tion ma­chin­ery and pro­vide safe spaces for chil­dren to grow and thrive.