Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Founder of non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO) If There’s Not A Cause (ITNAC), Avonelle Hec­tor-Joseph, sug­gests that the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion de­vel­op a task force to re­view the ad­di­tion of new text­books or edi­tions to book lists and how reg­u­lar­ly changes are made.

“Some kind of cap, not just say­ing some­thing but en­forc­ing it, so when I have my ten-year-old child and I spend $1,000-plus in books, two years lat­er my eight-year-old can­not use the books, two, three pages that are dif­fer­ent,” Hec­tor-Joseph ex­plained.

Her sug­ges­tion came af­ter her NGO sent a me­dia re­lease last week not­ing that par­ents were still ap­proach­ing ITNAC for as­sis­tance to pur­chase their chil­dren’s school sup­plies even af­ter the new school year had start­ed.

“Yes it is free en­ter­prise, but when free en­ter­prise over­steps its eth­i­cal bound­aries, the Gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the care of du­ty to step in and say lis­ten, we have to use those books or teach­ers will be man­dat­ed to say in edi­tion num­ber five you can find the same thing in edi­tion num­ber four and give the pages,” she said.

Hec­tor-Joseph said her pro­gramme Soul 4 Sole had re­ceived many re­quests for as­sis­tance, even as the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry had dis­trib­uted $20 mil­lion in its School Sup­plies and Book Grant pro­gramme to 23,345 ap­pli­cants.

The ITNAC founder added that the Min­istries of Trade and So­cial De­vel­op­ment should al­so be in­clud­ed in the task force.
She said an­oth­er op­tion was a prop­er school book rental pro­gramme.

Founder of the NGO Dar­ing Se­quence Youth Foun­da­tion, Dar­nell Salden­ha, con­firmed that even af­ter their an­nu­al book dri­ve to 25 schools across T&T, par­ents were al­so still ap­proach­ing the foun­da­tion for help.
His sug­ges­tion was for the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to col­lab­o­rate with NGOs who work on the ground.

“In­stead of they take the NGOs’ ideas and run with it, come to the NGOs— we have the da­ta, we have the stats, we are lit­er­al­ly reach­ing the peo­ple in need,” he said.

“Look in­to the NGOs, check out sta­tis­tics over the years, work with the schools to find out the ef­fects our or­gan­i­sa­tion has,” he said.

Mean­while, Project Hope TT re­vealed that there were over 800 ap­pli­ca­tions from fam­i­lies this year but they were on­ly able to fa­cil­i­tate 300.

Founder Ri­ad Ram­pat said this dis­par­i­ty un­der­scored the ur­gent need for in­creased sup­port, es­pe­cial­ly for stu­dents in rur­al com­mu­ni­ties such as Ker­na­ham, Guayagua­yare, Ec­clesville, and Biche.

But Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art cau­tioned those NGOs about “dou­ble dip­ping.”

“Whilst there are needs, the sys­tem can be abused,” he said.

Stew­art said peo­ple had ap­plied to sev­er­al sources for as­sis­tance with grants, sup­plies, and uni­forms.
He added that there should al­so be a prop­er needs as­sess­ment sim­i­lar to what was done for stu­dents who get school lunch­es.